


Blue by You

by Lymphadei



Series: The Private Room [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Angry Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bondage, Bondage and Discipline, Codependency, Dark, Depression, Dom Sherlock, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Emotional Baggage, Eventual Smut, Explicit Sexual Content, Hard-ass Sherlock, Hurt John Watson, Hurt Sherlock, John Watson is NOT a Saint, John is a Mess, Kinbaku, Lots of Sex, M/M, PTSD John, Possessive Sherlock, Rope Bondage, Rough Sex, Sexual Fantasy, Sexual Tension, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Is A Bit Not Good, Sherlock is a big softie, Sub John, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, they're both fucked up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:56:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6628204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lymphadei/pseuds/Lymphadei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After six years, John has returned to London after the war, messed up and seeking penitence. Sherlock is reluctant to forgive so easily, but is unable to stay away from John. The two of them must navigate the turbulent waters of their rekindled relationship with the threat of Moriarty looming over their shoulders. </p>
<p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3929026/chapters/8800636">Into the Grey</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Return

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! Here we are at the beginning of a very, very wild ride. Thank you to everyone who has waited so patiently for this! I'm so excited to introduce this new aspect of Sherlock and John's relationship into the fold. Let's just say, it's going to be pretty rough for our boys before things get better. Thank you to my wonderful betas [Crickette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crickette/pseuds/Crickette) who also has a wonderful story, [The Unlikely Math Geek of 221B](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6235615) (Go check it out! I promise it will be worth your while.) and Morgan! You are both amazeballs and I'm happy to have such intelligent, creative minds helping me along. 
> 
> If you'd like to know the sort of mood I was in while writing this, check out my playlist:
> 
> [Wasting My Young Years](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlQbMmFlnuY) by London Grammar  
> [Life Round Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlOmdyH_7Os) by James Blake

There were fingers threading through his hair. Long, familiar ones that scratched lightly at his scalp with every pass through. His mouth tasted dry and bitter, gritty like grains of sand settled over his tongue. A resonant voice murmured comforting words into his ear. Sometimes the same person would utter filthy things to him, but always when he was in that dark, floating place between the realm of sleep and awake. That’s how he knew it was just his mind. 

John hadn’t heard that voice in six years, since he was twenty-two and as close to love as he could ever remember being. He only had the dreams during his first year in the military, but then they stopped. Now, John was a broken soldier, invalided back to London with a shredded mind and a worn body. And the dreams were back with a vengeance. 

He never forgot Sherlock, merely put him out of mind, but his body remembered everything. He recalled everything about the way the calloused pads of Sherlock’s fingers felt trailing down his spine, the press of lips against the nape of his neck, and a long body spread along the length of his own. A tickle of downy curls against his shoulder, the smell of semen and sweat.

Someone moaned, John couldn’t figure out who. He hadn’t felt his throat vibrate, hadn’t felt Sherlock’s breath on his arm.

Fingers turned to talons that dug into his skin like knives. A white-hot flash of pain made him grunt and reach for the hand clamped beneath his ribs, stabbing crescents into his reddening skin. It hurt, but John was hardly going to pull away. Not when it’s been years since the smell of Sherlock’s cologne intoxicated him and dulled his senses. John longed for it in a way he hadn’t for anything else. He was afraid to open his eyes, because as soon as he was awake, the illusion would vanish like a spectre in the night.

But try as he might, a vivid light was seeping between his lids, and then Sherlock was drifting away from him. When he could no longer hold onto unconsciousness, John pried his eyes open, met by the luminous cloudy light of an early morning. As every other time he woke up in his bedsit, John blinked several times, uncertain as to whether it was to clear the rheum from his eyes or will himself away from his bleak abode. Sometimes, John thought he would rather not wake up at all.

Returning as a veteran was not what John had thought it would be. Six years ago, he envisioned a house and a pension that left him with extra to spend, someone to fill the void that Sherlock left behind, and an exciting medical job waiting for him, perhaps as a surgeon. Then everything went to hell in Afghanistan and John was barely living on a penny.

He sat up, a slow and painful task with the healing shoulder and the bum leg. When he reached for the cane, his trembling hand tipped it over. As it clattered to the floor, John pressed his lips together to contain the scream bubbling at the back of his throat. He was frustrated and angry, felt useless. What use did anyone have for him? What was stopping him from opening the drawer of his bedside table, pulling out his illegal pistol, and jamming it between his teeth? He could already feel the steel in his hands, cool and heavy, and the curve of the trigger beneath the pad of his index finger. He wanted it so badly, wanted to squeeze the trigger and blackout, fade away. Become nothing.

John dragged in a shuddery breath, frightened by how quickly his thoughts had taken a dark turn. His life was over. If he kept on the way he did, soon, he might just take himself up on the offer and end it all. There was nothing left in London for him anymore. The very same city he loved rejected him. Things costs more than they did when he left. Before, he gave no thought to taking the tube and riding cabs. Now, every pound counted, and there wasn’t enough of it to give John a sustainable living.

Either he would have to go, or he would have to  _ go. _

 

-

 

Sherlock tapped his nails against the table, his fingers falling one by one to the wooden surface with accompanying thumps. Whatever was going on around him, he’d long forgotten about. 

His eyes were focused on nothing, turned inwardly instead, to his mind palace. It was empty and cavernous save for the grand staircase. All the doors were closed off to him, except for one. It was a bedroom, but neither from 221B nor 221C.

It was small and tidy, inelegant and modest in a way Sherlock had grown unaccustomed to. He was used to the finer things, adored the luxury of silk sheets and egyptian cotton, leather seats and the fit of finely cut cloth. All of it gave Sherlock a sense of power. Yet, when he stepped foot in the tiny room, vulnerability fell over him like a cloak. There, he was weak and sentimental, and both things could be attributed to the lumpy form beneath the sheets.

A tuft of champagne-shaded spikes escaped their cotton confine, still messy from Sherlock’s grip, and effulgent under the soft-yellow light spilling in around Sherlock’s dark form in the doorway. Sometimes John was there, and sometimes he was gone, like a vision Sherlock had spun up from somewhere deep and hidden; to him it felt as if John had always lingered there, even when they hadn’t known the other existed.

The lump under the sheet shifted, pulling the covers down as he rolled onto his stomach. John’s back still shone damp with sweat, tiny, shimmering beads that traversed down the nape of his neck and followed the curve of his spine. Sherlock could still see the imprint of his hand stamped across John’s hips.

He was perfect. Sherlock’s perfect, lovely submissive.

He didn’t dare move, lest the illusion be shattered, but he ached to touch, to hold, to caress. Sherlock was unable to pinpoint when being with John stopped being a want and became intrinsic. Even after six years, not a day passed where he didn’t think about him.

The intel from Murray had continued up until his assignment abruptly changed. He was shipped to a training unit in Brunei, where he would be for the foreseeable future. Sherlock would be a fool to think that Mycroft hadn’t had a hand in Murray’s sudden departure from Pirbright. The hateful man. Somehow he’d caught wind of Sherlock’s spy and eliminated him from the equation. And that was how any and every connection to John Watson was eradicated.

Everything except the memories.

No matter how Sherlock tried to delete them, John haunted his every thought like a shadow. Constantly, he found himself searching through crowds for short, stocky men with endless navy-blue eyes and a cow-licked crown of golden hair. His preference hadn’t changed with time. Taking another submissive was unthinkable, but it didn’t stop him from propositioning men for a few hours of make-believe.

Of course, they never knew that they were all just cheap imitations. None of them could truly match up to John. There was always something missing. This one doesn’t have the right eye shape; too large, not narrow enough, the colour was off. That one wasn’t short enough; John’s leg hair was sparse, his were too hairy, too thin, shoulders not broad enough. During the sex, he could hardly look his partner in the eyes, so he’d turn them on their belly and fuck them that way, gag their mouth shut so they wouldn’t speak and ruin the fantasy.

Because that’s all it really was. An elaborate fantasy.

John was in Afghanistan getting shot at. What hope did Sherlock have that he would return to England, to London, just for him?  

“...formulating proposals for continuing research in these areas. We want to focus on quality control. As of late, our clientele has expanded and data shows that our profit has exceeded greatly. Although we’ve recovered from last year’s… incident, we are still on shaky ground. We shall keep a very close eye on next month’s intake. Now, on to our discussion regarding labour, as well as the costs of cutting a few hundred bodies.”

Mycroft, exercising his jaw as per usual.

Anthea sat beside him, eyes glued to her phone screen. She was squinting down at her mobile with furrowed brows drawing deep crevices across her forehead. Either Anthea didn’t realize she had myopia, or she was stubborn and in denial. Her eyes flicked towards Mycroft then back to her phone, which she inclined until it nearly touched the tip of her pointed nose.

Sherlock’s new personal assistant sat at his right, scribbling furiously into his notebook, intent on every dull word that Mycroft uttered. Tiring. He really had no patience for the boy.

Sherlock had purposefully hired him for the mere fact that he looked nothing like John Watson. Dark hair and green eyes, perfectly straight teeth, fashion-forward and not a hair out of place. Dreadfully ordinary and not a secret to be uncovered. Sherlock sighed, and immediately, all eyes were on him.

“Half that, Mycroft. A few hundred people may be nothing for you in your “minor government” position, but labour here is satisfactory, and I’ve not had one complaint since we’ve acquired a full roster.” Sherlock leaned back in his chair and steepled his hands beneath his chin, his hard gaze trained on the man opposite him. “Cut one-fifty, but that’s all I’ll allow you. The rest are useful.”

A slight narrowing of Mycroft’s sharp, wintergreen gaze was the only sign of disagreement he displayed, but as Holmes Pharmaceuticals was not his company, all he could do was acquiesce. For the time being. Sherlock knew his brother well enough to know that he would hear about his decision later. Mycroft always had to have a say in everything Sherlock did. Age hadn’t changed a detail.

Mycroft nodded once, and Sherlock stood, his leather rolling chair making a soft  _ swish _ as it glided backwards across the carpet.

“Good,” Sherlock said, stuffing down the urge to roll his eyes as his assistant fumbled to gather his papers. “Then this meeting is adjourned. Good afternoon.”

He strode out without bothering to wait for Liam. He’d catch up… eventually. Sherlock left the conference room and headed down the hall toward his office. Once there, he stepped in and shut the door behind him, hoping for a moment of peace without the drone of numbers and quotas clogging up his mind. A lunch break to text his dealer and schedule a meeting would be the cure-all.

Sherlock had only been seated at his desk for five minutes before the telltale knock at his door announced Mycroft’s unsolicited presence. Sherlock glared at the door, waiting for the lard in a three-piece suit to squeeze through the frame. Of all the days…

Mycroft stepped into the room with a sense of imperiousness that made Sherlock’s skin prickle, and his teeth grit. Everything about him screamed superiority, from the delicate tap of his ridiculously expensive umbrella on the lacquered wood, to the soft swish of chafing cashmere. Mycroft’s keen gaze drifted around the room with painstaking intensity, and Sherlock noted as his brother’s eyes zeroed in on even the minuscule changes. Always watching, frustratingly omniscient. Sherlock wanted him gone.

Mycroft’s put-on indolence was annoying, and Sherlock had better things to do than watch the fool wear holes in his floor.

“ _ Why  _ are you here, Mycroft?” Sherlock growled, eyes fixed pointedly on the report on his desk, harsh and cold. He glanced at his watch, then back down at the paper in front of him. “It’s lunch time. I’m sure there are plenty of restaurants that need filling to capacity. By the look of you, I’m sure you’ll have no trouble accommodating them.” Sherlock sneered, throwing the paper down in a fit of pique.

Mycroft sniffed and sank into the seat stationed in front of the window. Outside, the horizon stretched on and on over the rolling, shimmery dark dregs of the Thames.

Mycroft raised his chin with a subtle hint of indignation, though his knowing gaze didn’t waver. He balanced the umbrella beside his gracefully crossed legs and grasped the handle with one hand over the other, patient and immovable.

Finally, he deigned to speak. “You are beginning to show your hand, dear brother, to all and sundry,” Mycroft stated, soft and firm. “You’re allowing others to see your weakness, as if you’ve forgotten what you are worth, what you’ve worked for.”

Sherlock pressed his lips together, ire burning like a lit furnace in the pit of his belly. He wanted to snarl and bite, rip, tear—anything to get Mycroft to leave him be, to let him be angry. “ _ Get out _ ,” Sherlock wanted to spit at him, but for the sake of his dignity, he kept his fury to himself and decided that he would wait his brother out.

“You’ve forgotten there are sharks in  _ this _ sea, and they can smell your blood. John Watson was not the be-all and end-all of you, so I will tell you this for the last time.” Mycroft leant forward, eyes spearmint-green and frigid. “Straighten yourself up, or I will make sure that the proper people are informed of your drug use and you will never see this place another day in your life. Occupying a ‘minor position’ in the government and all… don’t forget how easy it would be to make that happen.”

Sherlock stood, the wheels of his chair skidding back with the force of his movement. Outraged, his fists clenched on either side of him, wishing he could feel broken flesh bounce off his knuckles. “ _ You _ ,” Sherlock hissed, turning to round the table but never removing his flinty, silver gaze from his brother, “dare to come into my office and threaten  _ me _ ? When it was you who made me like this? You who denied me what I wanted at every turn?”

Sherlock’s voice was steadily rising, but the anger could no longer be contained. He felt it like a second skin, roiling over his body like bubbling oil, burning him alive.

Mycroft pushed his chair back, eyes dark and accusatory as he matched Sherlock’s stare fearlessly. “Jim Moriarty and your sordid past are who you have to thank for John’s absence in your life, brother mine.”

Sherlock snarled. “ _ Stop  _ saying _ his name _ !” His head was splitting and everything trembled around him. “You are not worthy—”

“Oh for the love of  _ God,  _ Sherlock—”

“—to say his name after all you’ve done to block any and all communication I could have had with him. What I am— _ who  _ I am now is because of your inability to mind your own  _ business! _ ”

Mycroft, who’d been standing rigidly with his thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose, whipped his head up at the accusation. “No,  _ you _ are where you are because you’ve never known when to leave well enough alone. You’ve always had an addictive personality, Sherlock, but had I known it would be this detrimental to you, believe me, I would never have let you out of my sight even for a minute!”

Sherlock reared back, disgusted. “I’m a grown man,  _ Mycroft, _ ” he fumed, spitting the name like an invective. “I don’t need looking after, and I certainly don’t want or need your guidance when it comes to what I do with  _ my  _ life.”

Mycroft’s expression cleared instantly, cold and impenetrable. “Those certainly weren’t your words when you needed my help discrediting Moriarty.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed as he registered the snide self-righteousness in his brother’s tone. “He was just as much a problem for you as he was for me, so don’t pretend—”

Mycroft stilled, back straight and nose tilted up like a pompous dignitary. “ _ All  _ I’m saying, Sherlock, is that six years have passed. It is time for you to grow up and act like the man you swear to be. This is  _ your  _ company;  _ your  _ work. Tell me, is the memory of John Watson worth everything you’ve worked for?”

Sherlock’s lips snapped shut, for once unable to come back with a quip or an insult, anything to run his brother off. All he felt was the burning sting of Mycroft’s question. The words “Of course not!” hovered over his tongue, heavy and uncomfortable, habitual. Yet, it would be a lie.

He’d thought that purging John out of his life would be conducive to the Work, and the attempt had been disastrous. So, he started self-medicating, then there were the men—by-products of John. In fact, he was due to see one that very evening. Only then could he think again, could function, even if not at one-hundred percent.

But the decimation of John’s memory was unthinkable, improbable and unfavourable.

Unable to respond, Sherlock turned his back to Mycroft and stalked to the window.

There was no forgetting John Watson. He’d been an addiction that Sherlock hadn’t been ashamed to glut himself on, and when John was no longer available to him, he’d paid the price.

He’d be lying to himself if he said he would never make the same mistake again. Because if there was even the slightest chance of John returning to London, there was no accounting for what Sherlock would do.

 

-

 

Sherlock panted, draping himself over a warm, tanned back as he pressed forward, hips flush against a taut arse. 

“John,” he ground out between gritted teeth, wishing he could go deeper, nestle inside of him and never leave. “ _ John! _ ”

He was close. He wrapped a hand around his lover’s cock and stroked, long, slow pulls that drew desperate moans from the back of the man’s throat.

Sherlock echoed him, thrusting hard enough to smack the headboard against the wall, deaf to the pounding on the other side of the wall and the yell for them to quiet down. He was on the brink of something great and John was bucking back into every push, hissing as Sherlock struck his prostate with unerring accuracy.

“Fuck yes,” the man grunted, and Sherlock shoved his head down into the pillow, resentful as the illusion was shattered.

Then, it wasn’t John beneath him, but Julian, a recent uni graduate who held a reasonable resemblance to John and usually respected Sherlock’s request to keep quiet. Sherlock snarled and tore himself away, his cock still hard and a bright, burnished red, wet from the lube. Julian gasped at the harsh retreat and rolled over with a protest, only to get a face full of cotton as Sherlock threw his clothes at him.

“Put your clothes on. Get out,” Sherlock ordered, wrapping his gown around himself and tying it off with quick, sharp movements.

Julian sat up, befuddled, but acquiesced to Sherlock’s demands. Still, he watched Sherlock with surprise and wariness. “What—”

Sherlock turned on him, mercurial eyes fierce. “You had one instruction: Don’t. Speak. So simple, you  _ idiot,  _ and you couldn’t even follow it!”

“Oh, fuck you,” Julian retorted, snapping his trousers up around his waist before jerking the zip up. “You are such a  _ prick _ , honestly.”

Sherlock ignored him, already lighting up a cigarette at the window. It was a shame he couldn’t storm out of the room while Julian pulled himself together. That was the disadvantage of meeting outside of 221B. “Money is on the table. Get it and leave.”

Julian swore beneath his breath, but did as he was told, flinging back one last parting shot as he opened the door. “And it’s Julian, not John, you arsehole.”

The door slammed behind him, rattling the generic art on the walls and the decorative hydrangeas on the nightstand.

Sherlock dragged on his cigarette and flicked the ashes into the tray he’d placed on the windowsill. He was still hard and aching, and images of John prodded restlessly against his mind. Countless memories of John around him, on his lap, face twisted in pleasure, slack jawed and red-faced. John on his hands and knees, gagged and ungagged, bellowing his bliss. A tight, humid tunnel strained around Sherlock’s tumescent cock, squelching with every thrust in.

Sherlock eased his hand beneath his gown and skirted around his cock to massage his balls, pulled tight to his body. His head leant forward of its own volition, warm against the cool glass, foggy with his breath as he took himself in hand and stroked.

John, on his knees, rope crisscrossed around his torso and back, legs and arms bound, and chest to the floor. He was a vision, spread out like so, and beautifully presented. The wings of John’s back kissed, creating a deep crevice down his spine, his hands joined at his coccyx.

His arse red from a thrashing, and Sherlock’s hand matching colouration from the force of his blows. Sherlock would untie him, and John would eagerly take his cock, because he always enjoyed when Sherlock roughed him up a little. The image blinked, must’ve skipped forward, because John was swallowing him down, lips covered in a foamy mixture of semen and saliva.  

Sherlock jerked forward, his hips stuttering as he rammed through his hand, mouth open and gasping as he came, splattering against the window pane and then dripping onto the carpet.

Like sand in the wind, the fallacy was swept away and Sherlock was alone in a hotel room, smoking his life away and tossing off in front of a window overlooking Big Ben and the London Eye.

Sherlock stubbed out his cigarette and retreated to the loo to clean up. He donned his suit and grabbed his phone and wallet, keys, then left the room.

A quick call summoned a cab to the kerb, and Sherlock slid in, waving the cabbie back into the driver’s seat when he’d made to go around and get the door. He had a few black cabs on payroll in the case of expedience. He had to say, it was much safer than one of Moriarty's spies carting him around London.

Sherlock already had his phone out when a text from Irene came in.

Sherlock raised a brow and slid a thumb across the bottom of the screen. When Irene’s thread loaded, Sherlock blinked, unsure that he was seeing correctly.

He tapped on the photo to make it larger and inclined the phone until the pixels blurred.

It was John.

It was him, but then it wasn’t. This John held himself differently; straighter. Prouder. He was older, too, obviously, and darker from copious amounts of sun exposure. The most notable difference, however, was the addition of a cane, medical grade. Psychosomatic leg injury, Sherlock noted. John was at a crosswalk waiting for traffic, clearly distributing his weight evenly on both legs. The cane looked like little more than a prop.

It wasn’t a very clear snapshot, subtly blurred and Sherlock could see little of his face, but there was no denying who it was.

Irene picked up on the second ring.

“Where are you?” Sherlock asked before she could say hello.

Irene sighed. “We really must work on your manners, darling. You’re not too old to bend over my knee—”

“Irene, enough!” Sherlock barked down the phone. It was imperative that Irene told him where she was. Surely John couldn’t have gotten far. “ _ Where  _ are you?”

“Not anywhere near where I took that picture,” she answered. “I just thought you’d like to know your pet is back in London. And looking a little damaged.”

Damaged. Of course he was damaged, the fool. What had he been thinking, going to Afghanistan in the first place? There were other places he could have gone to get away from Sherlock, ones where he wouldn’t spend his time getting shot at.

Sherlock hung up, foregoing a parting reply. He saved the photo to his phone, unable to take his eyes off of it. The first glimpse of John in six years.

The desire was still there, sat heavy in his gut like cream, and boiling. There was also anger. For six years John had been running, now he was back in London— _ Sherlock’s  _ London—without a word.

_ Damn him. _

 

-

 

The first thing John set out to do that day was to find some locum work. 

It wasn’t raining for once and John felt optimistic for the first time in months. His credentials were good, he knew, and if he managed to get an interview, he’d do whatever it took to get the job. The army pension he lived on barely covered the rent, not to mention the cost of food. Sometimes John would have to go without or live off of canned meat and veg until the next cheque came in.

He was tired of living in squalor. If he managed to find something decent, then he could look for new housing in a better location.

He took the tube to Picadilly Circus and began from there. Most saw the cane first and directed him to a chair where they brought him an application, much to his embarrassment. He saw the scepticism they regarded him with, but did his best to ignore it and fill out the application along with one of the copies he’d printed of his CV.

It wasn’t until he entered a clinic late in the day that he saw a familiar face.

“Sarah?”

The woman glanced up, then did a double-take as John approached the front desk she leant against. The secretary, an older, sharp-eyed woman with long silver hair pulled back into a ponytail, glanced between them curiously.

Sarah exhaled sharply and straightened, one hand going to her mouth, the other around her stomach. “John, what— where—”

She lunged forward and embraced him, and John, forgetting himself, dropped the cane and enveloped her in his arms. “Oh my God... Sarah,” he breathed.

Her arms were tight around his neck, hair tickling his nose as he turned his face into her shoulder. “ _ Where  _ have you  _ been? _ ” She exclaimed, huffing into his ear as if she were on the verge of sobbing.

John rubbed comforting circles over her back as she began to shake.

“You could have called,” she cried. “Wrote. Something.  _ Anything! _ ”

John nodded, his chin hitting her shoulder. “I know, I know. I’m sorry…”

Sarah pulled back abruptly and brushed her tears away with jerky fingers. “God, you’re such a bastard, John. I thought you got yourself killed.” The whites around her cornflower eyes were tinted red. Pearly tears sat at the tips of her lashes, which she blinked away. She was just as pretty as John remembered, even more so now that she was older.

“Well, I almost did,” John murmured, shrugging as he struggled to retrieve the cane from the floor.

Sarah moved to get it, but John raised a hand to stop her. “I’ve got it, thanks.”

His skin burned under their stares as he finally had his cane in hand, leaning on it as he stood up again. Sarah probably thought him little more than a cripple now. Shame gnawed at the tail-end of every thought. John rubbed the back of his neck and avoided Sarah’s gaze for as long as he could.

“Come on,” said Sarah, and tilted her head towards the door that led to the back of the clinic. “Let’s go talk in my office. My next appointment is not for a while.”

John nodded and followed her to the back, where she showed him into a small room with a desk and two chairs. John sat, leaning his cane against the desk, and pulled his satchel over his head to place on the floor by his feet.

For a moment, neither of them spoke a word. Sarah looked at him, and he her, taking in the subtle differences that came with a six-year absence. Her hips and breasts had filled out a bit more, and she was still fit. A few lines on her face, mostly around her lips; smile lines. Her eyes were bright and open, kind as always. John didn’t realize how much he’d missed Sarah until he’d embraced her. He hadn’t realized how much he missed human contact.

Sarah sat back in her seat and regarded him with keen, round eyes.

“So, what brought you here today?” She enquired, tenting her slender fingers.

John shifted in his seat, uncomfortable with the thought of Sarah knowing just how desperate he was for work. He hated that his first time talking to Sarah in years would entail begging for a job.

“Erm, actually,” John began, clearing his throat. “Do you run the place?”

Sarah smiled, shaking her head. “No, we’re just short on hands today. Brenda’s out sick. She’s in charge, but I’m standing in her place today, I guess you can say.”

John nodded, and cleared his throat again, lips pursed. He rubbed his damp hands over his trousers and started over. “Look, I—I was actually looking to apply. Locum work, perm… anything at this point,” he said, running a trembling hand through his hair. “I’ve not had much luck since I’ve set foot back on English soil.”

Sarah tilted her head, eyes gone soft and sympathetic. She dropped her hands, folded them. “Oh, um, sure. We’ve got—” She pulled opened her desk drawer and rummaged through it. “Ah! Here it is.”

Her hand appeared again clutching a sheaf of papers which she set in front of John.

“Take a few minutes to look it over,” Sarah suggested, standing and flashing a gentle smile. “Back in a tick.” She laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder as she passed him, and then he was alone.

It took him ten minutes to complete the application, and another five before Sarah returned with two steaming cups, one of which John was happy to take from her hands. He hadn’t been able to spare money for coffee or tea.

She took the application but immediately tucked it away in her drawer, locking it with the keys dangling from her wrist.

“So,” John murmured. “How’ve you been, then?”

Sarah’s lips pulled up at the corners, a smile hovering around her lips. “Perfect. I’ve been perfect, save for the fact that I’ve been missing my friend.” She reached across the table and grabbed ahold of John’s hand where it rested beside his cup. “I really believed something bad happened to you… I mean, I stopped hearing from you—you stopped writing and all I could do was speculate.”

Sarah’s eyes began to well up again, one teardrop escaping to trail down her cheek. “God, I’m so cross with you, John. But… you’re  _ here _ , and I just—you’re sitting across from me and I can’t quite believe it.” She chuckled through her tears, and held his hand tighter still.

His chin hit his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut and hoped his tears would dry up. It was bad enough that he’d crawled in like some kicked dog asking for a job. If there was anyone he didn’t want to see him like that, it was Sarah. “I’m—” His voice cracked, broke off, and he cleared his throat. “I am sorry, Sarah. I am. It’s just… If I didn’t make it back, I’d rather you didn’t miss me.”

Sarah rolled her eyes, the first real sign of anger she openly showed. “I would have missed you anyway, John! Me, Mike, your parents—hell, do any of them even know you’re back in London?”

She stared at him, waiting. John shook his head, unable to hold her gaze. “I wanted to be in a better state.”

Sarah nodded, her eyes dropping to their hands in chagrin. “And...have you seen him?”

John knew whom she referred to, thought about him non-stop. There was no escaping the shadow of Sherlock Holmes. “No, I—No.”

“Are you going to?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know, Sarah.” He ran a hand through his hair and turned away. “I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

The thought of seeing Sherlock again made his stomach turn. What would he say? The way he left, it hadn’t been on good terms, and in a way, he regretted the decision to swan off to the army without saying a goodbye. How could he expect Sherlock to forgive him for that?

“He found me, you know. Asked after you,” Sarah divulged. “He didn’t—John, he didn’t look well. He’s been on the news a few times. A while back there was a big thing with some nasty character.”

John’s head shot up at that, his heart racing. “Was it Moriarty?”

Sarah raised a brow, but continued her narrative without question. “Yeah, he—wait, _that_ was Moriarty?”

John sat back, processing what Sarah might be trying to tell him. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Yes. What happened?”

“He was accused of selling black market drugs, maybe implicated in a few crimes, but somehow he got off scotch-free. Went to ground afterwards,” she recalled. “Sherlock disappeared for a bit, too. The papers published all sorts of things about him, saying he ran off with a lover. Was back in rehab. All of it vanished the next day.”

John listened with a sense of dread. He wasn’t sure which part unsettled him more; the fact that Moriarty had escaped sentencing, or that Sherlock had fallen off the map for a period of time. All of it was odd, and none of it reassuring.

“Guess I’ve got a lot to catch up on,” John responded. His insides quivered, a testimony to his nerves.

Sarah nodded and stood. “Oh, most definitely.” She held out a hand. “Come on. Take you to lunch?”

John smiled, the expression genuine for what seemed like the first time in forever. “God, I thought you’d never ask.”


	2. The Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's confrontation with John doesn't go quite as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my wonderful betas for all their hard work on this chapter. I adore you both!

“Sherlock, why are you requesting John’s address?”

Sherlock knew the minute his elder brother’s name flashed across his screen that Mycroft could only be calling for one thing— to dissuade Sherlock from finding John. It was highly ambitious of Mycroft. Sherlock wasn’t the least bit concerned that his brother would succeed, but it didn’t stop his teeth from grinding as he stabbed the green call button lit up on his mobile.

“I’m a grown man,  _ Mycroft.  _ I don’t require, nor do I want, your supervision,” Sherlock hissed. Why couldn’t the fool just mind his own business? “I advise you to keep an eye on your own dealings. Had you done, you would have cottoned on by now that one of your subordinates has been selling secrets to the Chinese ambassador, whom—might I add—is currently sitting in your office and  _ drinking your best scotch,  _ now  _ piss off _ !”

Anger bled through him, sharp and prickly as thorns. That Mycroft would even attempt to bar him from communicating with John made his fists clench and skin flush with rage. 

_ Six years. _

Sherlock snarled at the thought of how long he’d been waiting. No, Mycroft could try, but Sherlock knew his brother better than anyone else. He often forgot that Sherlock had eyes and ears of his own, and the necessary resources to bribe anyone he so chose. Not even Mycroft’s own “thoroughly vetted” staff were immune to the siren call of money. Dangle a few hundred pounds here, a well-disguised but decipherable threat to line that offer, and the promise of more where that came from, and Sherlock held the strings to Mycroft’s puppets.

Just as Sherlock intended to end the call, Mycroft’s voice poured through the line, smarmy and scornful. “Once an addict, always an addict I suppose,” he sighed. “One would imagine you’d have more sense after your friend left you the first time, but as always, you are a glutton for punishment. Always the intransigent fool.”

It was cold and calculating, two things that Mycroft had always been, but there was a desperation underlying his words that gave him away. Sherlock nearly threw his head back and laughed, but then, he was already losing time indulging the sentimental idiot.

“You seem to be under the misconception that what you think of me keeps me up at night.” Sherlock smiled, brittle and fragmented just like the insipid emotions all piled atop one another, fighting for dominance in his wretched mind.

“You can play your little word games, brother, but you of all people know well enough: If there’s something I want, I get it. Your interference has never done me any better, so if you’d like to see me sober, then you’ll step aside and I’ll continue to do as I please.”

It was a repugnant threat, but the thick silence on Mycroft’s end let Sherlock know that it worked as he hoped it would. It was manipulative and hateful, but Sherlock wasn’t above using whatever he could to repel Mycroft until he gave in. He knew what John leaving had cost Sherlock. If there was a chance that his former lover being back in London would keep him from living recklessly, then it would be counterintuitive for Mycroft to stand in the way.

“You’re despicable,” Mycroft seethed, then immediately ended the call. Two minutes later, Sherlock received a text message from Mycroft’s personal assistant, containing an address.

Guilt was an afterthought as Sherlock rose from his desk and straightened his suit, his mind already halfway across town. With John. Alive.  _ There.  _ He had to see him at once.

 

-

 

The cab came to a stop at an address in Lambeth nearly twenty minutes later, due to traffic. Sherlock stared up at the looming tenement, the tip of his pointed nose kissing the cool pane of the window. 

Against the monochromatic backlight of the clouds, the building was ugly and foreboding. The traffic was heavy and diverse, less hurried than in the city, and even through the doors, the smell of greasy fried foods turned his stomach and rattled his nerves.

The cabbie cleared his throat pointedly, lifting one shaggy, grey eyebrow in the rearview mirror when Sherlock snapped his eyes over to regard him. He retrieved his wallet and paid the fare, plus a bit more with added instructions. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, you may leave.”

The cabbie nodded, and Sherlock stepped out onto the pavement, raising the collar of his coat to shield his neck from the cool air.

The interior was no less decrepit than the face of the building, and Sherlock cursed himself for feeling anything close to pity for John, that he had to return to poverty. Sherlock promptly stuffed that particular emotion away. If there was one thing he knew about John, it was that he was stubborn and prideful. Pity of any kind on Sherlock’s part would push him away faster than any contemptible words.

Looking around, Sherlock could see no sign of a lift, and John was on the eighth floor. He peered up, into an old chandelier with dim bulbs, circled by fluttering moths and stained with years worth of rusted grime around the glass. The staircase was circular, providing a nauseating view to the top where small, symmetrical windows allowed very little natural light. It was depressing.

Sherlock ascended the stairs, listening for the usual signs of occupancy but each passing floor was lifeless and eerie in its silence.

Finally, he was stood before H3, John’s bedsit. The door was a hideous shade of green, peeling to reveal the eggshell primer beneath. The handle was worn and scratched from years of use, but still shiny from a recent cleaning, which meant John hadn’t been out often since his return to London.

Sherlock scraped a hand through his hair, his mouth dry as he reached up to knock on the door. He wasn’t sure how he’d react to seeing John again for the first time in six years, but the amount of anger he felt was most alarming. He thought that time would dampen the emotion, but that John didn’t come to him, didn’t even tell him he was back in London made Sherlock’s vision cloud with rage.

From inside, he heard a murmured expletive, and John’s irked tenor muffled by the door. “Just a minute!”

A soft, “Fuck,” then Sherlock was standing face-to-face with his former lover, older and different in countless ways, but still no less enchanting than he remembered.

Ash-blonde hair, shorn and bleached pale from the sun. Smooth, tawny skin revealed a few new lines around dimmed, deep-set indigo eyes. Beneath the short-sleeved vest, Sherlock noted the addition of sinewy muscle, the way John’s veins pressed against his skin in stark relief.

He blinked once, slowly, and met John’s surprised gaze.

“John,” Sherlock spoke. The name came out tight and guttural, sharp as barbed wire as it left his throat. There was definitely anger there, but he hadn’t been expecting the relief. It washed over him like rain after an endless drought, and Sherlock couldn’t contain the breath of wonder that swept past his lips.

John stiffened, one hand reaching absently up to his breastbone, the other seeming to hold his weight up with the door. His breath hitched, and he licked his lips. Sherlock’s eyes dropped to follow his tongue, unable to catch his breath fast enough at the surge of memories attached to that appendage.

“Sh...Sherlock, what —” John stopped, blinking rapidly as if to convince himself that Sherlock was really there. His grip tightened on the door. “How did you find me?”

The question snapped Sherlock out of whatever sentimental haze he’d begun to fall into, and like a brick snapping from a rope, the pain of every last year without John came crashing down upon his head until all he saw was red.

Sherlock took a step forward, then another, relishing the bob of John’s throat as he swallowed, the slight puff of air he was close enough to feel as John gasped, and most of all, the delicate peony flush blooming on the crest of his cheeks.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes down at his former lover, ire a whirring, blistering machine in the pit of his belly; lust, a sinister underline of every addled thought.

“There’s no place in London I wouldn’t be able to find you, John,” he murmured, closing the gap between them until John was either forced to step back or surrender. Sherlock was sincerely hoping for the latter, because any kind of insubordination from John was liable to set him off.

“In fact, if you didn’t want to see me, then you’ve come to the wrong city.”

Sherlock felt the warm pull of adrenaline and desire, so close to the very person he’d been longing for in the past years, and like a dehydrated man in an oasis, he drank.

John didn’t make a move to ward him off as Sherlock surged forward and fit his lips over John’s, biting, sucking, anything to push himself as far inside John as possible. He expected John to fight back, push him, punch him, anything but the passivity he was treated with as he crowded them back across the threshold.

He hissed, hand wrapped around John’s nape as he thrust his tongue as far into his mouth as it could go, slamming the door shut with the other. The distinctly uncomfortable pang of hurt was thrumming away in his chest and the heat in his groin warmed pleasantly at the hardness of John’s cock pressed against his thigh. He still remembered what made his lover jump, the algorithm to the perfect climax for John Watson. Despite his anger, Sherlock ached to bring him to the pinnacle and hold him there, then bring them both crashing down to a stupefying conclusion, panting and wet.

John—mouth slack and humid under Sherlock’s onslaught, thin lips parted on uncontrollable gasps—struggled to keep up. Sherlock was determined to keep him on his toes. Short, blunt fingers curled into Sherlock’s shoulders. The pain of his nails dulled through layers of fabric, but the heat of it still seeped through.

Sherlock hadn’t been planning any of it, to see John and fall backwards into the same unfathomable well he’d spent six years attempting to climb his way out of, but less than a minute in the younger man’s presence rendered him useless. Those opaque eyes he adored still inflamed him as they ever did, too many shades of blue to properly label and dark enough to be mistaken for anything other than extraordinary. But everything about John was extraordinary, and Sherlock loathed that even in his outrage, these things still  _ mattered. _

Sherlock tore himself away with a snarl, pushing past John as he crammed his fingers through his hair. His nails grated painfully against his scalp, but Sherlock welcomed the discomfort. It grounded him in the moment, reminding Sherlock that there was more than enough reason to hate John and much cause to make him suffer the way Sherlock had during his absence.

John wasn’t even looking at him. The stiff line of his back trembled slightly beneath his vest, arms folded as he avoided meeting Sherlock’s gaze, the coward. Sherlock wanted him to see, to observe all that was taken away from him when the idiot ran off to get himself killed in a bloody desert.

“How long have you known, then?”

To Sherlock’s surprise, John was the first to break the silence, though it didn’t dispel the suffocating cloud of disappointment and regret that settled like poisonous fumes in every nook and cranny of the droll little bedsit.

Sherlock sniffed, debating whether to ignore the question. He should be the one getting answers, he thought in indignation. After all, Sherlock had always been in London; he wasn’t the one who ran without a parting word. No contact for six years. It all made him more than a bit sour.

“Today,” he bit out. The words were bitter on his tongue and at his sides, his hands curled into fists. “You must have been busy, that you couldn’t spare a moment to call.”

He snorted, narrowed eyes sweeping the room, the signs of regular inhabitance jumping out like flashing, red indicators. It was past noon and John’s bed was unmade, his vest was rumpled and the right side of his hair was flattened from his pillow.

Sherlock stalked around the room, fingers tapping restlessly against one another as he stopped at the unsturdy desk beside John’s twin bed. That dreadful cane leant against the wall in the gap between the bed frame and the desk. Sherlock smirked darkly to himself at another correct deduction. John obviously didn't notice that he was standing perfectly fine without the help.

There were newspaper clippings scattered over the surface, some about the ongoing war, the obituary column, but mostly the theme seemed to be Sherlock’s public efforts to expose Moriarty for the fraud that he was, during John’s absence.

John puffed out an exasperated breath behind him, and Sherlock had to stuff down the urge to scream at him, rant and rave about all the ways in which things had been miserable, and how no one was quite like John though he searched and searched. He seethed, detesting that one person could have so much power over him.

“Sherlock, what are you doing here?” John enquired, finally turning to face him.

As much as John liked to think he’d mastered apathy, Sherlock could see past it like transparent film; John’s guilt, his remorse, his  _ regret _ , his depression. His willingness to surrender, to be subdued. There was a plea John refused to voice, but the disparity between what he tried to project and the desperate glimmer of his indigo eyes was telling.

Sherlock took his time meandering his way back to John, because if anyone was going to be demanding things, it would be him. He mulled over his words, catching John’s eyes, allowing him to see only what Sherlock wished him to. Want. Disappointment. Outrage. Underneath his skin, it coalesced until he was swallowing around fury and need, and everything he wanted to do to John was tingling at his fingertips.

Sherlock tilted his head and regarded John for a long moment, dragging his eyes down John’s chest and belly, lingering on his legs as he remembered parting those thighs several times and burying himself between them, until he was satisfied that John was fidgeting enough.

“All that running hasn't done you much good, John,” Sherlock said, voice low as he scanned the room again with as much regard as he’d grant a cockroach. “And here you're back again...” Frigid, blue eyes flashed down to John's leg, froze on his shoulder, then back to meet his gaze. “Broken. Pathetic.”

John's lips thinned until they paled, and Sherlock delighted in every bit of discomfiture that crossed his unassuming features.

John's brows drew inward and Sherlock nearly bared his teeth in triumph. Anything to wipe away that dreadful indifference, because Sherlock was craving a fight, and John was going to give it to him.   

Finally, John sighed and massaged his brow with an unsteady hand. “Sherlock, if you've got nothing to talk about, then I think it's best you leave.”

Despite having spewed his own vicious words, John's request burned, little, hot coals smouldering in his chest. It made him cross that he couldn't tell his anger apart from passion. Sherlock hated him and in equal parts adored him even still, missed John much more than he cared to admit, and was eager to crawl inside of him as he’d done before. 

There was a wall, six years thick, built upon with mortar made from their mistakes, and strong enough to fortify the distance between them. But since when did Sherlock ever pay mind to boundaries?

Sherlock risked a few steps forward, disinclined to let John out of his sight for even a moment. Instead, he crowded him, watched from his periphery as his shadow engulfed John's. As it rightfully should.

Even as his breathing slowed, his blood rushed through his veins, heavy and thick. Sherlock blinked, but it felt slow and sluggish. His mouth flooded with saliva.

“You didn't stop me kissing you just now,” he assessed, eyes cutting down to those narrow lips as a slick, pink tongue swiped over them. “You're a soldier. If you didn't want me here, you’d have no trouble getting rid of an unarmed civilian, hm?”

His hardening cock was a leaden reminder of just whom this man was and what he’d once— _ still _ , apparently—meant to Sherlock. It was Pavlovian in nature, ingrained, that even a moment in John's presence was weakening to the point of debilitation.

To his credit, John stood his ground, stubborn as he’d ever been. But oh, Sherlock could  _ ruin  _ him! However, patience was key. Patience, patience. God, how he  _ hated  _ that word.

John stood there like a lamb to slaughter, yet there was nothing about him so innocuous as a young sheep. No, John was a sacrifice he’d partaken in many times. A veritable feast for his gaping maw;  _ sweet _ and as addictive as his usual seven percent solution of cocaine. But not at all innocent.

“You  _ like  _ it—you  _ want  _ me to be here, admit it,” Sherlock snarled. “I'm the most exciting thing you've encountered since you left that miserable sand pit behind!”

“Why, Sherlock,  _ why?” _

Finally, a response. Had Sherlock been a lesser man, he would have slammed the air with his fist and rejoiced. Finally, Sherlock was getting a response from the stubborn fool!

“So you can Lord it over me that I'm back here, in London, living in  _ this!” _

John gestured to the room, the bed, the empty walls. “Nope. Not happening, Sherlock. I've made my bed and I'm prepared to lie in it.”

“Fine. Lie in it.” Sherlock angled his head towards the bed without breaking eye contact. He closed the distance and gave a little shove, watching with barely concealed glee as John stumbled back.

John gained his footing with a muttered swear, before coming chest-to-chest with Sherlock. He could almost taste the spice of John's fury on his tongue, longed to run his tongue across his square jaw and grip the skin between his teeth.

“Sherlock,  _ what _  in the bloody  _ hell—” _

Sherlock pushed him again, until they were halfway across the room and the backs of John’s knees were touching the side of the bed. “Lie in it, John. Lie in the bed that you've made!”

John rammed his hands against Sherlock's chest, furious, yet his eyes were dilated. “Sherlock! What the hell are you on about?”

“You, John!” Sherlock shouted, wanting nothing more than to reach out and claw and tear. Instead, his hands curled uselessly in the air on either side of John's shoulders, a pathetic release for his mounting frustrations. “All of this is about you! God, you're like a  _ parasite _ , burrowing into my mind at every moment—I can't  _ think _ !  _ Me, John!  _ I can't  _ think!  _ And  _ you _ . You come back as if nothing ever happened, holed up in here. Hiding. But there's no place in London you can hide from me, John, you ought to know that.”

He was disgusted with his own ramblings, but the words rushed out like water from a tap. John's expression shifted from vexation to disappointment, then shame and hurt.

Good.

Sherlock wanted him to hurt. Six years of running could do that to an individual.

“Then to stare at me, as if I'm some stranger, when I've had you—,” he broke off, strangled by the strength of his indignation, that John should be standing there, still so desirable after all he’d done. “You  _ left.  _ No word for years and not even the decency to send a letter.”

“Sherlock,” John beseeched. “You've no idea  _ why—” _

_ “I don't care!”  _ Sherlock yelled. “I don't care, John. Anything, you could have come to me about anything and I would have found a way to help you. Don't you think I would have done? If it was money you needed, I had it in spades. If it was a job, I paid you well. If it was something more than our arrangement, I was prepared to make you that offer, but you were set on believing me to be some sort of monster that you couldn't even  _ talk to me!” _

He felt sick with hate and stupid with love, and neither of the two balanced out well. His eyes burned with grief and the way John looked at him. He ached to turn away. It was impossible. If he looked away, he might wake up and John would be bleeding out under the Afghan sun.

John blinked twice, then squeezed his eyes shut. He opened them, reaching up to press his palms against Sherlock's heaving chest. “It was nothing to—  _ you  _ did nothing wrong, Sherlock. We weren't perfect, but you made me happy.” A brief pause. “I didn't—I didn't  _ want  _ to leave, Sherlock.”

Sherlock caught his wrist, encircling them with his large hands. He eased John's hands off his chest, remembering the texture of his skin, the knobby protrusion of his pisiform, more pronounced than it should be.

He stared, a prisoner to John's misty, blue gaze. “You should never have left,” he whispered, lifting a palm to lie against his lips.

“Sherlock, I—if I'd had a choice, I would have chosen you, you know that—”

It was too much to hope for, yet not good enough. Sherlock needed more than ‘if'. He needed to know that John would never, ever leave him again.

One minimal push and John was willingly falling back on the bed and Sherlock with him, refusing to allow him even a moment's respite.

He knew the planes of John's body by rote, and years hadn't diminished the memory of what made his lovely boy gasp and writhe. Like habit, John's legs fell open for him and Sherlock settled between them, at home and finally in familiar terrain. Men could look like John Watson, share his attributes, but none could inflame him like his errant lover.

John's knees around his ribcage might as well have been vices. Sherlock couldn't breathe so he took back his oxygen from John's lips. He thrust a hand between the mattress and John's head, latched onto his fair strands and pulled until that mouth was gaping and slick. Being inside him again triggered that incremental descent into insanity, a sluggish trickle like honey tipping out of a jar. He’d felt it before, that intensity that he knew he'd experience every time with John.  

Sherlock's hips rolled uncontrollably into John's. He was insatiate, compelled by love and other vicious sentiments he wanted nothing more than to spit vitriol at, because they were useless!

John's tongue ran across his lips and Sherlock's vision grew hazy with lust— lust and greed because simply having John's body, wanton and craving, wasn't enough. He needed more.

He pressed down and a breath of air puffed past John's lips with a sound delicious enough to send Sherlock’s heart pounding and his libido soaring. He thrust again, just to catch that sweet sound in his mouth. Except that John felt so wonderful against him, tumescent cock prodding Sherlock's belly button, and Sherlock's massaging the outline of his balls. He gasped along with John until it hung in the moist air between their wet lips, thin and fragile.

Again. Again. Again. Until Sherlock reached a steady pace and John's breath hitched with every jerk of his hips. John's dark eyes lowered to slits, and when he attempted to look away, Sherlock caught his jaw with firm, gentle fingers.

He lay the other palm on the mattress to hold himself up, then tilted his head down to capture those lips in a blistering embrace. They were rutting like inexperienced teenagers and Sherlock was beginning to chafe, but he wouldn't give up that moment for all the mysteries in the world.

If the world crumbled into nothing, Sherlock never would have noticed. John was all that mattered, all that would ever matter. 

John's breath skittered across his cheeks as Sherlock pulled away, eager to watch the ecstasy transform him into something disturbingly beautiful. Nothing could compare to the reality of John spread beneath him, a canvas more poignant and vivid than anything Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo could ever depict. John’s pupils had blown to large black holes that devoured the turbulent seas of his volatile navy eyes. They seemed to shift by the second, vacillating emotions that always surrendered to one in specific: Want. 

They were moving as one, John pressing up to meet him and Sherlock stroking down as the momentum built. John had set everything aflame, and heat pooled to the very bottom of his belly until his toes curled in his shoes. Every bone in his body tensed, balanced on the precipice.

John's hands clenched on his back, legs tightening around his ribs. The metal frame of the bed creaked and groaned under their combined weight, the only sound to accompany the music of their enjoyment. Nothing so sweet as the cries that left John's lips. If the noise of the bed got too loud, Sherlock would take them to the ground and finish what he started, this time with less layers.

Sherlock groaned, eyes half-lidded as his cock slipped beneath the spheres of John's balls and pressed into the seat of his trousers. John was more heavily built now and Sherlock could feel the added definition of his arse, the strength of John’s hold around his waist. He wondered if he’d allowed anyone inside him since their last time together. Would he still be warm and tight enough to ache? Would he still clamp around Sherlock's cock until his eyes rolled back in delirium?

Sherlock nipped his chin, the corner of his mouth, licked across his lips and moaned when John's tongue kissed his. He’d miss the eroticism of being with him, the comfort they’d shared enough to do away with boundaries.

Sherlock had taught John that inhibitions meant holding back, and John knew well the punishment for doing such a thing. Sherlock was a selfish man, willful and possessive. He wanted all of it, everything that John had to give, and Sherlock would happily lower himself to any means just to have him.

He lay his damp forehead against John's, moving with less vigour, until they were undulating at an unhurried, sensual pace. He was so close. He dreaded the moment it was all over.

He could feel his heart thumping irregularly, like bongo drums slapping away inside his chest.

“John,” Sherlock grunted, more or less a sob. “John.” He slipped his thumb up the dimple of John's chin to just under his swollen lip, exhaling tremulously as that tongue darted out to lick the tip.

He snapped his eyes shut and forced away his impending climax, afraid to let the moment pass. But, of its own accord, his finger tipped over the soft flesh of John's mouth and onto slick landscape of his tongue.

John closed his lips around it, held and caught Sherlock's stare.

It was all over.

He squeezed his eyes shut as his orgasm rippled through him like an earthquake, rattling every bone in his body, every thought in his head. All he could feel was a mindless downward spiral, the long plunge into a depthless crevasse. His shout echoed in the tiny room and beneath him, John’s muscles locked and relaxed in powerful spasms.

They still moved in unison, riding out the waves of their climax together.

When the shudders faded, Sherlock stayed, shifting his weight to lie half atop John and half on the mattress. He waited, hand outstretched over John's chest, counting the intervals between breaths.

He’d thought that seeing John, that being intimate with him would make him feel whole again. Instead, the puzzle pieces still didn't fit as they should, and John…

Not yet. He couldn't find it in himself to forget what he’d done.

“I don't forgive you,” Sherlock murmured into John's cheek. “I think… I think I hate you for what you've done.”

John stiffened and his pulse sped up beneath Sherlock's hand, but he didn't care because John needed to know—he needed to know that Sherlock would always remember his abandonment, and that he would never be trusted again.

His chest was weighted with sentiment he loathed to carry and unusually numb. John should have been his, should have trusted him. Why couldn't Sherlock stay away? Any man with a modicum of intelligence would heed the signs that screamed ‘Beware!’. Once burned, one does not set out to repeat the same mistakes, and yet…

His fingers clung to John's sweat soaked jumper, reassuring himself of the presence he’d missed for so long.

_ ‘Oh wretched man that I am.’ _

 

_ - _

 

Sherlock didn't bother returning to the office after leaving John's bedsit. He knew that his mind would be ravaged with images of John as he was that afternoon. Damaged, older, debauched and wanton, but most importantly, alive. 

221B was as he left it that morning: vacant and unkempt. He was never one to bother with company and Mrs Hudson hadn't ventured up to tidy in a few days. It was just as he liked it. Everything in its place and nothing out of the ordinary where his comfort was involved.

He almost wished the same could be said for himself. Almost. No matter how much he hated the impact one tiny little man could have over him, Sherlock felt like he could breathe for the first time in years. John’s presence caused a ripple effect in every aspect of his life, and Sherlock found himself all too receptive to it.

He’d left John on unsatisfactory terms. Lying on his side facing the wall, silent since Sherlock's declaration.

Sherlock hadn't stayed long afterwards. He’d retreated to John's minuscule bathroom and washed himself off, then left without a word. He knew himself well enough to figure that it wasn't enough to assuage his appetite. He’d return, and John would be there waiting for him.

Sherlock hung his coat on the rack and turned to the set of stairs he’d avoided for the last several years.

Every step shared a memory, and as he ascended, Sherlock remembered each one clearly, until he stood before the door. Images flashed before his eyes like old, sepia-toned film: Pressing John back against the door, showing him 221C for the first time, soaking up the wonder in his wide blue eyes. So naïve, so young and changeable. Sherlock had thought that the moment John laid eyes on the room, he’d bolt. But John, unpredictable John. He’d submitted, opened himself up to be trussed up, touched, taken in ways he’d never experienced before.

Sherlock turned the knob and the door opened easily with barely a complaint from the hinges. He flipped the switch and an ambient glow filled the room.

It was dust-ridden and stale with time, as well it should be. He hadn’t used the room in ages.

The chair in the corner reminded him of a warm body across his lap, and the mirror spanning the wall brought with it the image of John tied up, ankles to wrists. John, splayed and cuffed to the bed, senses muffled and writhing from the arousing pain of Sherlock's flogger. Their phantom figures on the floor, fucking like dogs, John's back arched beneath Sherlock's chest, thighs spread and his sweet prick nearly kissing the ground.

Sherlock closed his eyes, calling back the control over himself that he seemed to have forgotten since the news of John's return.  

He stepped out of the room and closed the door, then lay his forehead against it. Could he trust John with that part of his life again? Would it be worth it?

No matter what his logic told him, Sherlock was certain that he’d be returning to 221C very soon with its long lost occupant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join me on [tumblr](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com) for all news on updates and future projects! 
> 
> Feedback is always encouraged and appreciated.


	3. The Only One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock discovers that John is a necessity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my amazing muse and literal genius, [Crickette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crickette/pseuds/Crickette). You keep me right! And also to my beta, who I am indebted to, [Morgan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgan_Elektra/pseuds/Morgan_Elektra). You are both stunning literary queens and I thank you for helping me with this. 
> 
> If you're curious to know what kind of mood I was in when this chapter was written, click [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPgUyinaq_c) to listen.
> 
> Onwards to the story!

“Sherlock, we need—wait, where the hell are _you_ haring off to?”  
  
Lestrade. Tactless as ever and currently blocking the only exit out of Bart’s morgue. He’d counted himself lucky that Molly had been on her way to lunch when he’d arrived with the detective inspector in tow. Sherlock came to his conclusion twenty minutes ago, and spent the following forty-five thinking of John.  
  
As infuriating as it was, Sherlock found himself thinking of his former lover with unsettling frequency. It was worse than before, when he didn’t know if he would ever see John again. Sherlock did everything he could to put the memory of John to rest. He’d thought that the substitutes would be an adequate distraction. None of it worked, and now that he knew John’s whereabouts, remembered what he smelled like, cataloged his changes and experienced the touch of John’s body against his again, everything intensified.  
  
Sherlock needed John.  
  
It was the worse form of dependency. To need someone so much you’re emotionally crippled without them. John might as well have murdered him for all the use Sherlock was to anyone now.  
  
“If the brother has a green ladder, then there is your suspect,” Sherlock stated, shrugging on his coat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I must be going.”  
  
Lestrade sputtered, slack-jawed as Sherlock shouldered past him and into the corridor. “Sherlock, _how_? You can’t expect me to just take Downing into custody without proper evidence.”  
  
Lestrade pinched the bridge of his nose and huffed out a sharp breath, turning to see that Sherlock was already striding down the hall. “For the love of—Sherlock! I’m going to need your statement—”  
  
Sherlock whirled around, stalking back to the detective until their noses were no more than an inch apart. “Would it kill you to use your brain, Lestrade, or have I overbalanced your tiny little mind with _common sense_?” He snarled. “If your lot hadn’t been trampling over every bit of valuable information, one might have noticed the flecks of green paint in the gravel about a metre apart in two particular patches of soil. A ladder, then. I’ll have you know, once I brought back a soil sample, it only took me two minutes to examine and identify. While you were off buying Molly lunch, _I_ was actually doing _real_ investigative work and made further contact with the Downing household concerning the ladder. The gardener confirmed the absence of said green ladder, which points to the other obvious conclusion. It was brought onto the property by none other than Keith Downing, youngest brother and only surviving heir to the house Sir Harry Downing left to the family.”  
  
Lestrade raised his chin under the onslaught of Sherlock’s diatribe, and narrowed his eyes in concentration, but Sherlock wasn’t fooled. It was obvious that the detective inspector was only catching every other word. The moment after Sherlock’s deductive rant cut out, the corridor rang with a stuffy silence, only to be pierced shortly by Sherlock’s sharp exhale at the befuddled expression Lestrade angled at him.  
  
“... but what has the ladder got to do with anything?”  
  
Sherlock couldn’t believe his ears.  
  
_That_ was who the unsuspecting citizens of London entrusted their safety to! Sheer stupidity; the amount of it made Sherlock want to gag. He didn’t have time to sit down and draw out a diagram for Lestrade. Surely, the badge he toted around like a key to the city was worth _something_.  
  
Sherlock growled, already empty of whatever patience he’d harboured, though there wasn’t much to begin with. It had been two weeks since his confrontation with John, and Sherlock hadn’t been nearly as satisfied as he felt he should be. Especially after telling John what he’d been holding onto for years now. Being able to say what he needed to should have set him free, but he was just as much a slave to sentiment as he’d ever been. The mere thought of it nauseated him.  
  
“Listen, I’m only going to go over this once. I won’t be going down to Scotland Yard to give you a statement, so do what you have to do to get this.” He waited with a scowl as Lestrade fumbled with his phone for a moment, checking his watch as the detective activated his voice recorder. “Jack Downing was a superstitious man, and the younger brother knew this. As superstition dictates, to walk under a ladder is to tempt fate, so Keith Downing erects a ladder on the side of the house nearest the pond—an odd place, considering there are no windows in this particular wall—and sends a bottle of scotch to his lightweight brother. As expected, Jack is heavily intoxicated when he comes into contact with the ladder. As was intended, he attempts to walk around the ladder and falls into the pond, consequently drowning. Have you got all that?”  
  
Lestrade, looking insultingly impressed, shoved the phone into his coat pocket in exchange for a flattened, half-emptied pack of Marlboro Reds. He shoved one between his lips and let it dangle at the corner of his mouth, unlit, until they emerged from the building.  
  
“Can’t believe you got all that from a ladder,” Lestrade murmured around his cigarette as he lit up. Sherlock inhaled the smell, his fingers tingling in their gloves with the urge to pocket the rest of Lestrade’s cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked in days. The thought of going to John with the piquancy of tobacco lying on his tongue, impeding his taste buds, curbed his craving. Every sense needed to be honed and sharp. John was something to delight in and savour.  
  
Sherlock planned on taking his time the next go round. He was going to partake in what John had on offer; nibble at him until he was a crying, shivering mess. Shed his clothes, sink down over him and cover up that body with the length of his own. It would be a slow possession.  
  
Sherlock held his hand out for a cab. No more trust for personal drivers. No more trust for anyone. A black cab eased over to the kerb, and without acknowledging Lestrade’s gruff “Evening,” Sherlock slid into the backseat and relayed John’s address to the cabbie.  
  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
Sherlock didn’t bother knocking this time. A quick press of his ear to the door confirmed the hum of air flowing through the room’s ventilator; he could feel the gentle vibrations of it through the door. Inside, John’s bedsprings creaked and groaned, grating and metallic as he shifted on the mattress. A soft groan. Sherlock doubted there would be anyone else in the room. The last time they’d spoken, John hadn’t looked fit for company. He was sure much hadn’t changed in the short time that had passed. Night terrors, then, or just restless sleeping. Neither would be uncommon for a man recently discharged from the army.    
  
He picked the lock and stepped into a darkened room, pitched in black save for the flickering lights provided by the marquee sign of the busy cinema across the way. Before he’d seen him, Sherlock heard the unsteady, ragged wheezing. When his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, John was sitting upright in his bed, back rigid and face damp with a sheen of sweat as his chest heaved; eyes wild. At the end of his outstretched arm, he held a pistol, cocked and steady, aimed squarely at Sherlock’s forehead.  
  
Nightmares, Sherlock concluded, and what could possibly be signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He would need more data to extrapolate from.  
  
Sherlock closed the door behind him, leaving the room encased in a solitudinous gloom, pierced only by the intermittent lighting outside the window. It merely served to highlight the gaunt dip of John’s cheeks and the smudgy hollows beneath his eyes. The milliseconds between illuminations made John appear ghostly and pale, flickering in and out of view, his arm lower each time until the gun was on the table beside the bed and his head buried in his hands.  
  
Sherlock strode to the rickety desk and switched on the lamp, observing John as he lifted his head and blinked into the sudden light. Nothing had changed since his last visit. There was almost nothing to show the bedsit was inhabited, no personal effects, no telly, no decorations to liven up the drab room. The bathroom door was firmly closed, but Sherlock was certain there was nothing exceptional about that, either.  
  
Instead, he reached for the water stained drapes above the desk and pulled them closed, blocking out the light from the cinema and bathing the room in a soft, murky light.  
  
Without anything else to distract him, Sherlock finally turned to the sorry sight of his former lover on the bed. In proportion to the mattress, the room, his own shadow, John seemed unacceptably small. He’d never been a large man, but where before John’s presence in a room more than made up for his slight frame, now it only diminished him. Beneath the thin, nearly transparent material of his vest, John’s clavicles were sharp and pronounced against his tawny skin. Sherlock didn’t have to disrobe John to know what would be underneath; protruding ribs and a stomach one less meal away from concaving.  
  
Sherlock’s chest tugged uneasily. It bit at him that he’d been so blinded by emotions, rage, that he hadn’t noticed all the signs before. He’d stormed in before, ready to have John at his mercy, broken and pleading for him to stay… but there had never been much purpose in breaking things that were already broken. It was possible that he was dealing with a new John. One that was irreversibly damaged.  
  
John was staring at him cautiously from beneath furrowed brows, eyes still bleary from sleep, right cheek streaked with pillow lines and temptingly rumpled. It was impossible not to drink him in. Whenever it came to John, Sherlock found his self-control flying out the window along with any feelings of animosity he harboured when not in the younger man’s presence.  
  
Looking at him now, Sherlock couldn’t dredge up more than the dull ache that resided in his chest constantly since John came into his life. It was like a disease there was no cure for, he couldn’t just make it go away, as much as he burned to most days. It made him feel compassion when all he wanted to do was rant and rave, and tear John down for leaving.  
  
Sherlock glanced behind him at the tiny space allotted for cooking. It was a small hob with two cookers built in next to a sink, beside which was stuffed a miniature refrigerator. Above the hob was a microwave and a cabinet, which Sherlock could see through the cracked door only enclosed a few mismatched cups, a plate, and a bowl.  
  
He sighed. When he turned back to John, the other man was blushing and avoiding his gaze. Sherlock rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone, texting his usual Thai restaurant for delivery. He was out of their delivery network, but the owner was indebted to him. In fact, he owned a share of the place after bailing it out of foreclosure.  
  
Finally, after a minute too long of stiff silence in which they wordlessly faced-off with one another across the room, Sherlock approached the desk and sank down into the rolling chair. It was comfortable enough for the time being. Sherlock hadn’t dropped by expecting luxurious decor and plush seating. He had enough of that everywhere else. Although he didn’t prefer the place for John, everything with him had always been about simplicity in a way that was comforting. Especially with all the pretension that came with money and power, the people tripping over themselves to wait on him hand-and-foot, the fake smiles and overly-polite hosts. He could do without the farce. He appreciated candid individuals when he came into contact with them, and that didn’t happen nearly enough as Sherlock would have liked.  
  
John was the first to infringe upon their unspoken contract of silence. He rubbed a finger over his eye, nose wrinkled as if he were pained. Sherlock hated that look on him. He missed John’s vibrant smile, the crinkle around his eyes when he’d grin up at Sherlock, the way his eyes seemed to brighten several shades. Now there was just the perpetual downturn of John’s lips to greet him and the hard rigid line of his jaw, tensed to the point where Sherlock wondered if his teeth ached from the pressure.  
  
“Sherlock, you can’t just barge in here whenever you feel like it,” John murmured half-heartedly. When their eyes met, John’s were resigned, the expression exaggerated by the slump of his shoulders, the indrawn curve of his thoracic spine. “Not anymore, Sherlock. It’s dangerous.”  
  
Sherlock couldn’t dispute that. John wasn’t the same man as he was before. No longer naïve and blinded by sentimentality. He was a trained killer, had handled a gun many times, going by the state of his hands. There was no reason for Sherlock to think that John was harmless any longer, but neither would he be barred from seeing him whenever he so chose. Work and consulting with the MET kept him properly busy, but if evening trips were what it took to see him, then however inconvenient it might be, Sherlock would do it.  
  
Sherlock leant back in the chair and swung his legs onto the desk, crossing them at the ankles. He used to do it often, back in John’s appalling flatshare with Stamford. It would drive John round the bend and then they would have a row that Sherlock knowingly induced, because the resulting sex kept his head spinning for days.  
  
This time, John’s steady gaze didn’t so much as flicker, though the corners of his eyes tightened the tiniest bit.  
  
“Why didn’t you move back in with Stamford? I’m sure he would have readily accepted you,” Sherlock drawled, his eyes circling the room with poorly hidden contempt. “But this…”  
  
John rolled his eyes and flopped onto his back in a move that was so reminiscent of pre-army John, that Sherlock nearly lost his breath. He blinked, attempting to reconfigure, and awaited a response.    
  
“He doesn’t know I’m back,” John said, and raked his nails over his scalp. They intertwined at the crown of his head, elbows akimbo. “Christ, Sherlock, you’re the only one that knows about all this, and I’d appreciate it if you kept it that way for now.”  
  
Sherlock watched him, eyes narrowed. “Not the only one,” he replied, holding John’s stare. “Sarah Sawyer.”  
  
John’s eyes flickered down, then back, contrite. “Yes, but I needed a job.”  
  
“And?”  
  
“And, what?” John spat, finally sitting up. “Money doesn’t grow on trees, Sherlock―”  
  
Sherlock scoffed, leaning back in the chair until his vision was filled with nothing but eggshell plaster and hairline cracks. “Oh, spare me the lecture John. You knew where to find me.”  
  
The ensuing silence was louder than anything Sherlock ever heard and charged with static. So many unsaid things lingered in that moment, and curious to see how the conversation would continue, Sherlock righted himself in the seat and pinned his attention on John.  
  
“We hardly left one another on good terms,” John stated, folding his hands into his lap.  
  
Sherlock crossed his legs to keep from going to him, comforting him. “Yes, well. It still would have been nice to know you were back.”  
  
When John met his eyes again, they were dark and red-rimmed. A striking finish to the pale, worn palette he presented. He cleared his throat, swallowed, and asked, “And how would you have reacted?”  
  
That, Sherlock didn’t have an answer for. When he’d learned of John’s return via Irene, he’d had time to prepare. Although the confrontation hadn’t gone as planned, Sherlock didn’t know what he would have done had John shown up on his doorstep randomly after six years. Surprised would have been an understatement. Angry would have been an understatement. _Gutted_ would have been a _vast_ understatement.  
  
Sherlock granted John a concessionary nod. In that respect, John had a point, but Sherlock would never say so aloud. For all that he recognized John’s reluctance, the thought of him coming back without a word made Sherlock grit his teeth in annoyance.  
  
“Sherlock, I―you’ve got to understand that the last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you,” John said, voice thick with emotions Sherlock didn’t want to analyse. “I care for you more than I’ve ever done anyone else, you _have_ to know that―”  
  
“ _Stop it_ ,” Sherlock hissed. He couldn’t hear anymore. He stood in a flurry of wool on legs that felt unsteady. John had no idea what he was doing to him. Those words. _Those_ words in _that_ voice. He’d have killed to hear John say those things six years ago, to know them when he had nothing left but the memory of an indigo-eyed, golden-haired lover to keep with him during the nights where he’d drug himself into a stupor. The words didn’t hold the same weight as they would have before. Now, they were heavier, Atlas’ burden on his back, steel weights on his shoulders.  
  
The sound of his knuckles popping snapped Sherlock out of his reverie. His fists were tightly clenched against his thighs, stance rigid and brittle as he fought himself. John’s admission was tempting, but it was not enough. Sherlock wasn’t sure what qualified as “enough”, but at the moment, he was sure that John wasn’t in any state for emotional upheavals, so he’d leave it for the time being.  
  
He dragged in a breath and slowly released it before turning to John again. He truly did look unwell. A sheen of moisture overlay the surface of John’s dark eyes, like liquid wax over stained glass, and Sherlock knew then that to resist John as he was would be to torment himself.  
  
Slowly, so as not to alarm the vigilant creature on the bed, Sherlock advanced cautiously and lowered himself down beside John who was staring strangely at him, as if they had never met. Sherlock held his gaze and didn’t give John a chance to look away.  
  
John seemed delicate, breakable, a house of cards ready to collapse at any moment. Sherlock was almost afraid to touch him, but he did. He raised a hand to John’s cheek, his heart plummeting at the first touch of stubble against his palm. John watched him, though his eyes were guarded, fingers fidgeting in his lap as he regarded Sherlock with longing and a deep sadness that echoed in his own chest.    
  
He pulled him close, the tears in John’s eyes finally spilling over the cup of his lower lids as he brought him forward to rest his head on his shoulder. John didn’t wail or sob, but Sherlock felt the entirety of his body tremble, the quiver of his breath wet on Sherlock’s neck. John hands held tightly to the lapels of Sherlock’s coat, before they slid up to grip his shoulders, shaking.  
  
Sherlock encircled him in his arms, his cheek resting upon the silken strands of John’s hair. It could have been days, hours, minutes that they sat there holding onto one another, before John’s tremors finally subsided. It was as if John had drained every ounce of energy from Sherlock’s body. He could hardly bring himself to move, or maybe it was that he didn’t dare release John for fear that he’d crumble and crack into pieces. The food hadn’t arrived yet and it was getting late, but Sherlock didn’t want to leave him alone. Not with a loaded gun and the shadow of his dreams still lingering behind those haunted eyes.  
  
“Come home with me,” he whispered into John’s hair, one large hand moving up to brush through the soft strands at his nape.  He inhaled, breathing in the salinity of John’s sweat, the musky odour of the bedsit, and his natural fragrance, herbal tea—Chamomile, a sleep aid—and rich, mossy notes.  
  
John began to shake his head. “Sherlock, I can’t―”  
  
“Just for the night, John. Don’t be stubborn,” Sherlock scolded, looking toward the door as a knock heralded the arrival of their food. He gently untangled their bodies and went to receive the delivery, tipping extra for the distance.  
  
Sherlock placed the bag on the desk and began sorting the containers, already sensing John’s sheepish demurral before he’d even spoken a word.  
  
“Sherlock you didn’t have to―”  
  
“Shut up.” Sherlock shoved a container to the end of the desk closest to the bed, where John sat curled in on himself like a wilting flower. “Eat.”  
  
John huffed, but reached for the container without another protest. Sherlock dug into his own, sat in the rolling chair, though not really tasting much of what he put into his mouth. The food was bland on his tongue, but not for lack of spices. He was simply too preoccupied with the obvious signs of John’s neglect.  
  
The other man was eating as if he hadn’t had a good meal in days, and by the look of him, Sherlock wouldn’t say that his conclusion was too far off. John barely left time for breaths in-between bites, and Sherlock could hear the bulk of the food going down his throat as he swallowed mouthfuls.  
  
When John caught him staring, he quickly flicked his eyes down and began chewing at a more sedate pace, a hint of pink staining his cheeks. John’s container was nearly emptied when he finally set it on the desk. Sherlock had already packed away what was left of his as he hadn’t had much of an appetite to begin with. Now they regarded one another silently, until John severed the temporary accord with a question Sherlock had been asking himself all night.  
  
“Why are you doing this?”  
  
John’s brows were furrowed and he’d gone still, hunched over his lap like a gargoyle atop a cathedral. Apt simile, in Sherlock’s opinion. John’s body was a sacred place, and Sherlock longed to touch him again, be granted entrance into the walls of his body, his mind, everything.  
  
But to be honest, Sherlock wasn’t very sure himself what the correct answer to that question was. One thing was certain, however: He was a selfish man and John, as he currently was, simply wouldn’t do. Sherlock was often disorganized, careless with material items, but the things he found most precious were always well cared for. His Stradivarius, for instance. He’d maintained it for years and it was still in top form. Without it, his mind wouldn’t be able to turn ideas over as smoothly when he thought himself in circles, or the nights when he couldn’t sleep for thinking of John and the trouble with Moriarty.  
  
But saying that John was just as precious as his Stradivarius would be remiss. John was more than. He was the quintessential example of something that should be cared for, invaluable, which he’d learned during the man’s absence. Precious was far too dull a word.  
  
As much as he loathed to admit it, Sherlock needed John. And despite what he’d said during the confrontation, Sherlock cared for him above all others.  
  
Instead, he answered in a cool tone, “The last thing I have time for is attending your funeral because you’ve decided to end your life, John. Don’t take it for anything more than it is.”  
  
Ice spread throughout his belly at his own rebuke, but Sherlock kept a firmly, bland expression and gathered up the containers. “Get dressed,” he ordered without sparing John a glance, avoiding the hurt he knew he would see in John’s eyes. It would be all too easy to walk over and kiss the frown from his lips, but Sherlock had already shown the cracks in his façade. He’d held John not fifteen minutes before and struggled with himself not to lay them both down and wrap himself around him. He’d already shown his hand, and that was more than enough to be getting on with.  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
It was nearing midnight when Sherlock let himself and John into 221B. Mrs Hudson had already swept through and turned every light on in the flat besides the bedroom and bathroom.  
  
John hadn’t uttered a syllable since they left his bedsit. He’d stared out the window as the cab took them down nearly vacant streets, eyes flickering unseeingly over late night stragglers.  
  
He’d brought his cane, which Sherlock nearly sneered at, a small bag of toiletries and a change of clothes along with him, as well as his gun, buried at the bottom of the bag when he thought Sherlock wasn’t paying attention. Why he needed it was anyone’s guess, but Sherlock kept quiet about it and led them out the bedsit with little comment.  
  
“You’ll take the room,” he ordered, removing his coat and jacket before he flopped down on the couch. He needed time to think and it was already late, bordering on insomniac hours. Sherlock didn’t mind, but John required the rest.  
  
When no sound of feet retreating to the room reached his ears, Sherlock opened one eye, then the other to see John staring fretfully through the kitchen door and down the hallway.  
  
“And you,” John asked, adjusting the strap of the bag on his shoulders.  
  
Sherlock waved a dismissive hand. “I’m fine here.”  
  
John pursed his lips, and Sherlock almost cracked a smile at the familiarity of it. “Sherlock, I’m not kicking you out of your room.”  
  
Sherlock growled beneath his breath. “Since when have you become so thick, John? I won’t be needing the bed because I don’t plan on sleeping, now take the bloody thing!”  
  
John returned his growl and limped off, grumbling under his breath about “grumpy blighter” and “stubborn idiot”. The door slammed and Sherlock released a breath he didn’t know he was holding.  
  
The hardest part was over. He’d thought that getting John out of the bedsit would be a challenge, but it had proved simple. He needn’t have to waste time wondering if that night was the one John decided to end it all. And Sherlock would be up all night listening for every little creak from the room.  
  
He reclined on the couch and took up his meditation pose.  
  
Lestrade hadn’t contacted him with the conclusion of the case, or whether he’d been able to take Keith Downing into custody, so Sherlock had nothing else to cast his mind on besides the man sleeping in his bed.  
  
The closed bedroom door made him itch for a cigarette. It would be so easy to step into the room, draped as it was in darkness, and slide into the bed, press himself against John’s back. The only thing welding him to the couch was his inability to predict how John might react.  
  
Their last encounter had been forceful and terrifying it its intensity. Neither of them had been able to see past their respective emotions. It had been erratic and devastating, but the next time couldn’t be that. John could barely grasp hold of himself, how could Sherlock, in his right mind, add a layer onto his load?  
  
Sherlock didn’t generally care much for the effect he had on people, but despite himself and how he felt, John mattered much more than he was comfortable with. Sherlock never had a problem steamrolling over others and their ridiculous sentimentality, but here he was, being sentimental. Hypocrisy at its finest.  
  
He sneered, kicking his shoes off, and turned sharply to recline facing the back of the couch, legs drawn up to his chest. John’s state of mind shouldn’t even be his concern. John had made up his mind on his own to do something so foolish as run away to join the army. Whatever was happening with John was no longer Sherlock’s problem.  
  
He snarled, resisting the urge to grab at his hair and pull. Where was his heartlessness when he needed it? Where was that brutal, cold exterior he’d carefully crafted over the years? Where?!  
  
The irritation gave way to exhaustion, and despite his racing thoughts, Sherlock’s eyelids slowly fell closed.  
  
  
  
-  
  
  
  
Sherlock woke what seemed like minutes later, but by the position of the moon and the lack of activity on the street, it was mostly likely around three or four. Something had pulled him from sleep, but as he scanned the room, it remained as empty and quiet as before. Then he heard a muffled curse from the bedroom.  
  
Sherlock was on his feet before he’d even processed the noise and heading toward the bedroom. When he poked his head in, John was setting a steaming cup on the bedstand and sucking on a finger.  
  
“All right?” he enquired, still a bit groggy.  
  
John nodded and removed his finger. “Yeah… burned it,” he replied, inspecting his injured appendage. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you. Almost made it, but I’m still a clumsy sod, apparently.” 

Sherlock's eyes flicked down to where John's cane had clattered to the floor. It wasn't hard to deduce what happened. John had jostled the cup while juggling the cane and saucer, and spilt the hot contents of the cup on his fingers. Sherlock would have to do something about that ridiculous cane, soon.

Sherlock eyes slid to John, the cup and back, curious. “Tea, at this hour?”

John nodded, sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed. “Yeah. I don’t sleep very well anymore. Couple hours is all I need, really. Sort of a changeover from the army.”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
John flicked his eyes up to meet Sherlock’s, swirling blue pools, lovely and oscillating in the dimly lit room. “You can come in if you like.”  
  
To Sherlock, it sounded like a proposition, the way John looked at him, and then he wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. “I don’t think I should.”  
  
John looked down for a moment, and when his eyes returned, Sherlock was suddenly breathless. “Please?”  
  
In the matter of a second, John was six years younger again, eager to please him and receptive in a way that should have been illegal. Sherlock had never been capable of saying no to that John, and the same still applied to the new one.  
  
Belly on fire, he meandered to the bed, and sat beside John, much the way he had earlier in the bedsit.  
  
John’s eyes fell to Sherlock’s lips, lingering for a second too long before they locked gazes again. “I missed you,” John breathed. Sherlock swallowed, brows furrowed as he watched the words form on John’s lips and roll effortlessly off his tongue. “I couldn’t stop wondering about you... all the bloody time.”  
  
“John―”  
  
“Nearly drove me mad half the time―”  
  
“ _John_.”  
  
“No, Sherlock, you need to know that you weren’t the only one who suffered, okay? You weren’t the only one. It was like being sick all the time. My chest hurt all the time, and it was like I―” He paused, swallowed, “like I couldn’t breathe.”  
  
Sherlock knew that feeling, and much, much worse. Day-by-day, it was akin to a sort of slow suffocation. Each day his lungs grew a little tighter, his breaths a bit shorter. He’d started wondering if maybe he was asthmatic. Then John’s arrival pushed air into his body and he could finally breathe again. Sherlock didn’t know if he felt relieved or terrified that John had experienced the same.  
  
“And now,” Sherlock asked, softly.  
  
John blinked down at his hands. “My chest still hurts, but for different reasons now, I think.”  
  
Neither of them spoke for several minutes.  
  
Then, “Me, too,” was all Sherlock could muster. He sighed, and dipped his head until John met his eyes, moved forward into his space. Like so many other times before, Sherlock captured John’s lips, gently persuading until he opened his mouth to him.

John let out a tiny sound against his lips and Sherlock reciprocated with one of his own, overwhelmed and helpless. There was no way he’d ever be finished with John. It was impossible, the thought, reprehensible.  
  
It wasn’t that he couldn’t stay away, it was that John was uniquely essential to his everyday living, to his breathing. Without breath, he would die, and John gave that to him. He breathed life into him even now, tiny little gasps that escaped his throat as they embraced one another. Everything John gave, Sherlock sucked it back into himself.  
  
John whimpered and Sherlock slowly lowered them to the bed. He settled over him, and took his oxygen back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. Feedback and con-crit are ALWAYS appreciated! 
> 
> Feel free to join me on [tumblr](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com) for the latest news and updates about all of my WIPs and future stories. You miss a little, you miss a lot. Just saying.


	4. The Little Blond Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sherlock appreciates a little blond man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the lovely feedback on this story. I am so honored to have such wonderful, loyal readers. I never thought this fic would gain so much traction, but it's truly been a dream conversing with some of you. 
> 
> Once again, thank you to my lovely beta [Morgan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgan_Elektra/pseuds/Morgan_Elektra), and also to my amazing muse, [Crickette](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Crickette/pseuds/Crickette), who has just uploaded a fantastic new fic you should ALL read, called [Shutter Release](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7980298/chapters/18257398)! Go and check it out ASAP! You won't be disappointed.

Sherlock awoke to the soft murmur of off-key singing.

The slant of light through his window hinted at an overcast mid-morning, and the noises of thriving Westminster were just beginning to trickle through the gaps in the sill.

Sherlock closed his eyes, allowing the memories of the night before to come flooding back.

They hadn't had sex, but it had been close. John was willing, had wanted him, but Sherlock was content to lie between his legs and rut against him until they both came.

It wasn't quite what he’d had in mind, but neither of them were in the state to be going any further. Sherlock wasn't sure he could pretend that he wasn't still angry with John. He was furious, and no amount of sentiment could make him forget the years they lost together all because John felt that he couldn't come to him.

“...shivers down my spine. Body’s aching all the time. Goodbye, everybody…” The song tapered off into a hum as the notes ramped higher.

Sherlock stayed sedentary a moment longer, letting the gentle strains of John's tenor wash over him, until the inactivity forced him out of bed.

The cover dragged along his leg and sloughed off to the ground as he stood, stretching. The pop of his back was satisfying, and with a grunt, Sherlock rolled his shoulders to release the tension.

As he strode past the loo, the hums quietened.

Sherlock went first to start the kettle, then to his mobile, which he’d left sitting on the coffee table the night before.

Three missed calls, one text. Two from the office, one call and a message from Lestrade.

 

  
****

 

**_Will be there. SH_ ** , Sherlock returned, then set the phone down.

The bathroom door opened and John emerged, cheeks flushed and sheepish as he hobbled into the lounge in the change of clothes he’d packed.

Sherlock walked to his chair and sat, motioning for John to take the opposite seat. Sherlock caught his gaze and held it, searching for something he wasn't quite sure of yet. Some unidentifiable emotion kept him riveted to John, an unfortunate, wriggling, writhing mass in his chest.

There was so much in the empty space separating them. Words upon words upon words, unsaid. Sherlock didn’t know where to start, so he focused instead on relaxing the tension creeping up his back.

Finally, John looked away and sank diffidently into the seat, holding tightly to the handle of his cane. Sherlock dropped his eyes for a moment to regroup and allow John to settle in his seat without feeling judged.

After a breath, John was the first to speak.

“I-um… thank you, Sherlock. For letting me stay the night.” John swallowed, brows furrowed as he flicked his eyes between Sherlock and his own clenched fists. “I don't—um, expect you to forgive me or anything, but it's nice—”

John broke off into a soft, harsh sound that resonated in Sherlock’s bones. Whatever John was trying to say, Sherlock felt it vital to let him get to the end of it.

“It's nice not being alone,” John finished hoarsely, closing his lids over reddened eyes.

Whatever Sherlock expected upon reunion with John, it wasn't this broken, fragile remnant of a man sitting across from him. He’d been fully prepared for a stubborn, tenacious young soldier; someone unapologetic and proud. Yet, everything in John's body language screamed regret like a giant, neon fixture.

It reminded Sherlock of his childhood companion, Redbeard. He’d been a spritely hound, deeply energetic and the one constant in Sherlock’s life for five of his young years. Then Redbeard became ill and, like a switch, he was another being altogether.

Redbeard began wasting away before his eyes. He stopped eating and became lethargic. Mycroft took one look at him and knew, knew what Sherlock didn't have the data to deduce at that age. Maybe if he had, Redbeard could have lived. They were always together, Sherlock and his hound, much more than Mycroft was home from school. Mummy and Father couldn’t have known as they were often too busy to notice what Sherlock got off into when he was bored.

Redbeard was diagnosed with skin cancer, and no amount of veterinary visits could have saved him. It was already too late.

That was the first time Mycroft tutted the words that would shape every relationship in Sherlock’s life from then on: Caring is not an advantage.

The silence stretched, uninterrupted, until John was fairly squirming in his chair, but Sherlock wasn’t sure how to proceed. He’d had it all planned out, this moment with John. He’d spend hours in his mind palace with John’s counterpart, spewing his vitriol, telling John that he’d been just another conquest. Of course it was all to soothe his wounded ego, Sherlock was aware, but none of it took the sting away nor the knowledge of how he truly felt about John.

“Sherlock,” John began slowly. “Why did you bring me here?”

Sherlock blinked, his eyes flickering down to John’s toes where they dug into the carpet. A nervous habit.

Sherlock didn’t know why he brought John there. All he’d known was that a world without John Watson would be one without Sherlock Holmes, too.

“Because you aren’t well, John,” Sherlock’s lips said, even as his mind screamed out in opposition to stay silent.

_ ‘Careful, little brother, your sentiment is showing,’  _ Mycroft’s voice echoed.  _ ‘Unbefitting of a man of your standing.’ _

John, despite coming back different—hollowed—wouldn’t appreciate Sherlock suggesting that he couldn’t take care of himself. If there was anything that hadn’t changed about John, it was his dogged determination to remain independent.

Why should he even care about John’s well-being? What purpose did it serve? John wasn’t well enough to even think of pursuing a relationship or being pursued, so why was Sherlock  _ wasting  _ his time on a useless, injured man?

The answer came swiftly, along with the wave of guilt that washed over him every time he thought of John in any other light than his golden boy. Because he still was. John was his conductor of light and the only man that occupied his mind with any manner of importance.

John flinched, lips snapping open to argue. He paused, licked his lips and tried again.

“Sherlock, I’m fine,” he ground out shakily.

Sherlock scoffed at the blatant disregard for his higher intellect. Of course John wasn’t fine, the imbecile!

John’s gaze cut away, but not before Sherlock caught the flash of distress in those opaque eyes. “Well, if me blowing a bullet through my skull is what’s worrying you, don’t. I’ve been taking care of myself this long. Don’t need you coddling me.” John stood suddenly, on unsteady limbs. The first step away without his cane was unsuccessful and John crumpled to the floor with a cry.

Sherlock was beside him before his brain could process what he’d seen.

_ John. Hurt. Terrified. _

The words ran rampant around his mangled mind as he helped a red-faced John back into his seat and knelt beside him. John avoided his eyes, his own hard around the edges, yet painfully vulnerable.

He was embarrassed, but Sherlock wasn’t going to let him be. This was a man who’d willingly dropped his guard before Sherlock in many pleasant occasions. How could John assume that Sherlock would think any less of him? If anything, John’s strength made his chest swell with pride.

“John,” he whispered, breaking his vow of distance and pressing a hand against John’s tense jaw. “John, look at me.”

John did, and Sherlock leant forward to press their lips together in a soft, placatory kiss.

Behind him, the soft rumble of his phone went unanswered as he pulled John forward into his embrace. John’s chest heaved against his own, an irregular up-down motion that muddled Sherlock’s thoughts and pushed them far out of his grasp until the only word/name/phrase/person/thing that remained was  _ John _ ,  _ John _ ,  _ John _ .

Sherlock couldn’t say whether it was his doing or John’s that John ended up straddling his lap. Small but powerful hands latched into Sherlock’s curls. His neck was wet with tears and snot, but Sherlock couldn’t bring himself to care about it, because John was breathing into his ear, hot and wet. It was almost too much to bear, the weight of John, his warm, solid body cradled in Sherlock’s lap and trembling like a taut wire.

Sherlock wanted him so very badly. For all the shame he felt at the thought, heat settled in the pit of his stomach and inched its way down, until his cock was suffused with blood. John’s answering hardness pressed against Sherlock’s navel, a pointed response to his doubts that John mightn’t desire him any longer.

John’s breath was a scanty whisper across his jaw, soft and flighty.

John canted his hips forward, just enough to test the waters. It was Sherlock’s undoing.

His hands, which he’d held firmly on John’s hips to steady him, dipped to the sliver of bare skin beneath the waistband of his ill-fitting trousers. Like a magnet to steel, the temptation to cling to John, to touch him, was irrepressible.

Sherlock wanted to tell John to stop him, deny Sherlock what he wanted, but the words refused to leave his throat. Whatever was happening between them, Sherlock needed it to stop while they were ahead, but a body against his own had never felt so sublime, so magnificent.

John moved against him, a slow, unhurried seesaw of motion that made his toes curl. John’s fingers slackened in his hair, and settled there more confidently. Then, John’s lips were hovering above Sherlock’s taking back the breath he was always,  _ always  _ nicking from Sherlock’s chest.

All of his senses felt heightened, not unlike the effects of cocaine when he needed the clarity, the focus. His phone was buzzing insistently where he’d left it.

Mrs Hudson was watching her baking show, hemming and hawing to the ever loquacious Ms Turner about some man named Paul Hollywood. The Married Ones next door were fighting again.  _ John’s heart was stammering against his own _ . Someone was leaning obnoxiously on their horn, the next street over.  _ John’s eyes went an impossibly darker shade of blue when he was aroused. _ Mr Chatterjee was arguing with… with a customer and— _ John’s pale lashes flecked with dewy drops _ . A lorry tumbling its way over a pothole.  _ John was leaning forward. Their shared, stuttering breaths. John was kissing him. _

Sherlock’s hands—complete traitors, the both of them—bullied their way into John’s trousers, catching the globes of John’s arse between his grasping fingers.

Night after night after night, Sherlock sought memories of the real thing, facsimiles of John that he knew he’d never find. God, and then John was right  _ there _ . In his hands, against his lips, on his lap.

Sherlock was convinced he was possessed, controlled by some interdimensional being that was pretending to be him. Never had anyone exacted so much power over him, knew every pressure point; the way John melted into Sherlock like warm caramel and the sweet blessing of his mouth.

Sherlock just barely restrained the whimper from leaving his throat as John’s weight bore down on his prick. He dug his nails into John’s arse and surged forward. The slick warmth of John’s mouth was terribly familiar and comforting, like coming home after an extended absence, and propelled his vehemence.

The scrape of John’s stubble made Sherlock gasp with the utter need to possess. Sherlock wanted to suck him, fuck him, take John upstairs and play with him for hours on end. He could picture it perfectly, what John would look like in ropes now. A boundless spread of tanned skin and new musculature to explore, his hard, weeping cock in Sherlock’s fist, red-cheeked, eyes gone soft and doe-like.

John hissed against his lips, breaking the kiss in favour of pushing back on Sherlock’s invading fingers as they slipped further down, caressing the tight rim of John’s anus with the pad of his thumb.

When he spoke, Sherlock’s voice was quiet, deep and wrecked as John squirmed in his lap. “Is this—are you sure you want to go down this road again, John?”

Sherlock knew that if John said yes, he would fall into it as he did all of his addictions: head first, all or nothing. It was impossible to have only bits of John. Sherlock needed all of him, as he had before, no strings, no contracts. Everything.

John stilled.

The noise of Baker Street, and Mrs Hudson, and the lorry, and the obnoxious driver one street over fell away, until the room was muffled in silence. Sherlock’s ears popped with the change, accompanied by the sudden, tinny bout of tinnitus. It appeared John had learned a thing or two about keeping his cards close during his time away, because for the first time, Sherlock couldn’t read the straight line of his lips or what made his brow crease. It was like opening a new book for the first time, curious to see where it would take him.

Sherlock cocked his head, close enough still to taste the mint paste on John’s breath.

“I don’t have to tell you what it will mean if you say yes, John,” Sherlock said, steadier than he had before. “You know where I want you.”

John’s gaze flicked to the ceiling and back, an involuntary response, though he was clearly remembering. Sherlock could barely contain his smile, but he bit down on it and waited. John was a slow thinker, considering how long it took Sherlock to convince him the first time, but he was wavering.

John met his eyes, swallowing.

_ Yes. _

Sherlock needed him to say it.

Sherlock leant forward, ghosting his lips across John’s lower one. It was worth it to feel John’s skin erupt in goosepimples at his touch. “And you know what I like,” Sherlock finished, then pulled John’s hips sharply again his own, using his heavy-handed grip as leverage.

John’s breath hitched, fingers wrapped punishingly into his curls. The pain was magnificent.

John nodded, not pulling away. “I know what you like.”

Sherlock’s fingers were back to their perusal. He ached to push them past the rim; he wanted to be inside John one way or another, soon.

John pressed back into the touch and let his legs fall wider around Sherlock’s waist.

“Mm,” Sherlock hummed, dipping forward to trace his tongue over the seam of John’s lips. The gentle rocking of those hips were driving him mad. “ _ Yes. _ ”

“Yeah,” John breathed, meeting Sherlock’s hooded stare beneath the fringe of his pale lashes. His moan fractured against Sherlock’s lips. “I like it, too.”

“Come here,” Sherlock hissed, and finally— _ finally _ —John was letting him inside without the hulking barrier of insecurity between them. It was better than it had ever been, an attack on the senses. John’s skin had no right to be as soft as it was after years in a hot desert. His ugly, frumpy jumper shouldn’t have been as appealing as it was, yet, Sherlock wanted to fuck him while he wore it. It was so  _ John _ of him to have no taste in clothes. Oh, Sherlock would tire of it soon enough and drag John back to Victor, but for now, he wanted what he’d been missing for years.

His cock pushed defiantly against the thin silk of his pyjamas, snug against John’s navel as Sherlock erased the bit of distance left between their bodies. The air between them crackled with electricity, and their movements began to take on a frantic quality. Sherlock was sure John would have finger-shaped bruises on his hips and arse, and his scalp would be sensitive come evening, from the brutality of John’s grip.

It had become fairly messy by that point, and Sherlock could hardly think past the wild, guttural groans emitting from John’s chest, and his own lips leaving a trail of sloppy kisses down John’s chin. The floor was the last place he’d had in mind for reunion sex — which, despite the unbecoming and understated choice of description, was exactly what it was—but Sherlock would be damned if he had to pull away and relocate.

No, they would just have to make due where they were.

Decision made, Sherlock tipped him over until John’s back touched the floor. Sherlock hovered over him, pulse racing and throat tight as John stared up at him with eyes far more worldly than he remembered. Sherlock could reconcile that John was a different man, now, but he would always look at John and see the young man that had trusted him so completely; the young man that Sherlock adored and would do anything for. They were one and the same, but with some marked differences.

“Get your shirt off,” Sherlock demanded, shifting just enough to allow John room to comply. John didn’t hesitate, pulling his jumper and shirt over his head and tossing them out of the way.  

Sherlock hadn’t realized he’d stopped breathing, until he dragged in a breath that tasted of sweet relief. John’s hands cupping his face was nearly too much, the way his eyes scrutinized Sherlock beneath hooded lids. Sherlock bent to lick across John’s lips and moaned as John opened up to him. His hips moved of their own accord, undulating down into the cradle of John’s body, the warmth of his covered prick.

John hissed, head thrown back as if in offering to Sherlock’s hungry lips. Sherlock began a slow descent, sliding his lips across the slope of John’s chin and down his neck. John’s throat bobbed, and Sherlock traced the movement with his tongue.

Sherlock chuckled in triumph as he managed to coax a whimper from John’s throat as his tongue teased the valley between John’s pectorals.

“Sherlock…”

Sherlock exhaled cool air against the damp skin he left behind, smiling. “What?”

John bucked his hips in a pleading gesture, but with a swift, “Down,” from Sherlock, he settled for squirming.

“Sherlock, my clothes,” he breathed, pressing his chest up wantonly as Sherlock’s tongue darted out to his peaked nipple. “My cock-”

Sherlock’s stomach trembled excitedly as he leaned back, memorizing the slick shine of his saliva coating John’s neck and chest, the red indent of his fingers, barely visible above John’s waistband, and the coral hue of his bitten lips.

Reaching forward, Sherlock balanced on one hand and massaged John’s needy prick through his trousers. “Six years is a long time to go without any sort of stimulation,” Sherlock began, observing the way John’s eyes widened with fear and suspicion.

Sherlock hated seeing everything sometimes. He didn’t want to know if John had been with another man, or if John had found another lover to sate his needs the way Sherlock had. He was intelligent enough to know that the vast majority of men John’s age lived a sexually active life. If anything, being in the army might have provided John with a wealth of sexual experience, which Sherlock was loath to admit.

“Which is why I’m sure you haven’t abstained.”

A guilt-stricken John was not what Sherlock expected to see upon broaching the subject. As jealous as he was that he was most likely not the only man John had been with anymore, he’d had his own string of bedmates in John’s absence. Of course, they had only been horrific substitutes, and Sherlock refused to invite them back to Baker Street. The memory of John had tainted everything, and to try and superimpose someone else’s image onto John’s had been nothing short of blasphemous.

Sherlock cleared his mind and continued, determined not to chase those thoughts lest he lose his appetite. “But just to make this clear, as long as you’re with me, there will be no one else.” He owned John. John was his and he’d be damned if some idiot returned home thinking they still had a claim on John.

John stared back, his face a well-painted canvas of bemusement. “What? Sherlock —of course, there’s no one else.”

Good, Sherlock thought, because John was his, and no one would steal him after Sherlock just got him back.

Although John still seemed confused by the abrupt shift of the ambiance, his body was receptive to Sherlock’s continued ministrations as Sherlock pressed his palm against the base of John’s cock and swollen bollocks.

Whatever discomfort that lingered gave way to the intense arousal and sparking energy that made them a slave to their bodies, their emotions.

John reached up, eschewing Sherlock’s t-shirt for the elastic band of his pyjama pants. He tugged against the band, and smirked as Sherlock’s cock sprang up eagerly. The cool air on his prick relieved him. God, when was the last time he had his cock in John’s hand, mouth, arse? He thrilled at what was to come.

John didn’t waste any time, wrapping his hand around Sherlock’s thick, blushing member with hands that did not tremble. The head of his cock pearled with pre-come, smeared across the pad of John’s thumb in a gentle motion that made Sherlock quiver with ecstasy. His bones set to quaking, and the same rush that always accompanied a high shot through his veins as John twisted his wrist expertly.

“I missed you,” Sherlock groaned, bracketing John’s shoulders with his arms he fucked his lover’s hand. John’s eyes were large and round, and endless. His dry hands chafed on Sherlock’s prick, but the intense relief overwhelmed all. It was not much different from solving a difficult case, slotting that last piece into place. Oh, the triumph. He leaned down, watching John’s petal soft lips part to accept him, so open and trusting even when Sherlock didn’t deserve it.

But at a bang on the door, John ripped his hand away, panting as he nearly shoved Sherlock off, startled at the sudden noise.

“Sherlock!”

It was Lestrade.

“Alright, I’m coming in!”

Before either he or John could arrange themselves, Lestrade stormed in, only to stumble back out. “Fucking hell,” Lestrade choked. “Okay, I did  _ not  _ want to see that.”

Beyond vexed that Lestrade interrupted them, Sherlock sat up, tucking away his—unsatisfied—erection. Damn you, Lestrade.

John had sat up as well, tense and edgy as he reached for his shirt and jumper. His movements were jerky, made awkward by his position on the floor and his lingering arousal.

Sherlock held out a hand to help him stand, but John ignored it with an apologetic smile and dusted off his trousers. Carefully, he bent to pick up his cane where it had slipped down the table and clattered to the floor.

“Are you two decent, yet?” Lestrade shouted through the door with far less conviction than before. 

Sherlock merely rolled his eyes and slumped into his chair. Whatever Lestrade came to talk about, Sherlock’s window for receptiveness was closing quickly, given what the fool inspector had interrupted.

John, seeing that he was not going to answer, swung his eyes heavenward in exasperation, before ambling over to the door and opening it.

Lestrade, still uncertain, peered curiously at John as he took cautious steps into the flat. Sherlock didn’t miss the way his eyes flashed down to John’s flagging, but noticeable erection and swiftly away, cheeks red.

“Er, Detective Inspector Lestrade,” Lestrade greeted John, thinking better of a handshake in lieu of a simple nod. Lestrade tilted his head, squinting at John when the younger man nodded and returned his placid smile. “I’m sorry, have we met… before?”

John flicked his eyes down, over to Sherlock, and then back to the inspector hesitantly. “Um yeah, six years ago.”

Lestrade scratched at his head, looking to Sherlock for help remembering, but Sherlock refused to help him. Watching John interact with other people was far more entertaining. 

“Yeah, wait a minute. You worked at the office, didn’t you? Didn’t see you round much after that. Did this tosser finally run you off?” Lestrade enquired jokingly, though the skin around his mouth was tight. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“John Watson,” John replied reticently.

Sherlock observed the interaction with a building sense of disquiet. Although John’s demeanor remained polite, where he was once open and friendly, he now shied away from casual conversation and regarded others with suspicion. Not altogether unusual for an army veteran, but John appeared overly cautious, as if Lestrade might do something unexpected at any moment. Which John didn’t have to worry about. Lestrade was the most predictable, mundane man ever to walk the face of the planet. In fact, Sherlock could predict that Lestrade was about to reach his threshold of discomfort and scold Sherlock for not answering his phone.

“That’s  _ Doctor _ John Watson,” Sherlock corrected with a prideful tilt to his chin.

At Sherlock’s statement, Lestrade swung to face him, face pinched in anger as he strode over. “And you. Sorry to interrupt your  _ party _ , but we’ve got a problem.”

Instead of responding, Sherlock waved a hand for Lestrade to continue.

“Which you’d know if you answered your phone, you daft wanker,” Lestrade growled.

Sherlock failed to dignify that with a response. He met John’s gaze and indicated the seat across from him, if only to stop his awkward fidgeting at the door. Also, he wasn’t ready for John to leave just yet. They still had much to discuss. 

John shot one last longing glance at the door, then limped over back to his chair, feigning ignorance at Lestrade’s obvious curiosity. 

“Anytime you’d like to tell me why you’re really here, Grant. That would be much appreciated.”

“It’s Greg, you knob, and your friend is back,” Lestrade barked, pulling the morning paper from his pocket and tossing it onto Sherlock’s lap. “Reckon that would go on the front page.”

Sherlock froze, staring at the picture plastered over the front page. Moriarty’s smiling face stared placidly back at him, a feigned friendliness, such that anyone could look at him and assume an average, white collar worker, pays his taxes, model citizen. But there was no greater scum than Moriarty, and Sherlock regretted not doing more to wipe his presence off the map. 

Lestrade cleared his throat, fidgeting with his gloves as he watched Sherlock read the headline. “He was spotted a few blocks from your building, leaving a Starbucks with that fellow who worked for you, Sebastian Wilkes.”

_ Wilkes.  _ The very name compelled his lips into a sneer. Last he’d heard of the man, Wilkes had taken a job with Shad Sanderson as an investment banker. It didn’t surprise Sherlock that he’d also throw his lot in with Moriarty. They were cut from the same cloth: Smarmy, conniving, and too arrogant for their own good.

Sherlock chanced a glance at the John, to see he’d gone still, knuckles white around the handle of his cane as he kept his eyes fastened on his lap.

It was the first time he’d caught a glimpse of Moriarty in years. The man had gone to ground just as soon as his name had been cleared. Because of the notoriety of his company and the accusations of his crimes, Moriarty’s name hadn’t been forgotten. Every few years, one bold journalist would have a crack at finishing Sherlock’s work and discrediting Moriarty, but none of the investigations ever amounted to anything.

It would appear that every judge in London was on Moriarty’s payroll.

Even with Mycroft’s vast amount of resources and connections, nothing more could have been done to rid the world of Jim Moriarty, short of assassination (which had also crossed Sherlock’s mind). However, Sherlock was sure that as Moriarty’s largest competitor in the pharmaceutical industry and the publicity of their rivalry, no court would have trouble believing him to be behind it.

“And what would you like me to do about it?” Sherlock enquired softly, hands steepling beneath his chin.

Lestrade narrowed his eyes, folding his arms in that way that meant he was about to gripe at Sherlock. “You spent years trying to drag this nutter down, and now he’s back and you’re asking what I want you to  _ do? _ ”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, letting his head drop against the back of the chair. “Meaning, no court in London will convict Jim Moriarty. While I’m sure whatever he’s returned for means nothing good for Scotland Yard and your workload, it would be a waste of my time to pursue him.”

His fingers twitched, mimicking the movements he’d learned by habit, feeling the hollow thrum of his violin strings beneath his fingers. Sherlock wished he’d brought out his Stradivarius before allowing Lestrade inside. Nothing got Mycroft out of the flat quicker than a Paganini composition, although Sherlock was partial to his concertos. Another thing he and his brother had never been able to agree on.

“Sherlock-,” Lestrade began, but Sherlock snapped over him before he could truly begin nagging.

“I thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to inform me of Moriarty’s return. Now, John and I have some things we must take care of before I leave for the office,” Sherlock rattled off, standing to steer Lestrade toward the door. “If there’s nothing further, we’ll chat another time. Ta-ta!”

“Hey-,” Lestrade complained, gaping as Sherlock shut the door in his face. “This isn’t over, Sherlock. And remember, you’re due at the Yard, anyway!”

With no further reply, Lestrade sighed tiredly and retreated down the stairs. Shortly after a muffled conversation with Mrs Hudson, Lestrade left quietly.

When Sherlock turned, John was standing, too, body angled towards the door.

Sherlock watched him for a moment, hesitant now that they were alone again. Sherlock fidgeted, unsure what to do with his hands, without the option of shoving them in his coat pockets.

They spoke at the same time, stumbling over one another’s words with the same nervousness one would expect out of two teenagers on their first date.

“Did you want, tea-”

“I should probably go-”

Sherlock frowned, taking the first step to close the distance between them.

Now that Moriarty had returned, Sherlock would be able to reassure himself with valid reasons why John was safer at Baker Street. Not to mention that the last time Moriarty got between them, John ran off for six years and joined the military. Sherlock wouldn’t risk that happening again.

He reached for John’s free hand, where it was curled tightly against his thigh. John’s hand was warm and dry, fitting perfectly inside of his own.

“Will you stay?” he asked, staring down at John with what he hoped was confident optimism and not the crushing desperation he truly felt. Good God, had he gone his whole life without experiencing sentiment, then that would have been perfectly fine. It ruled everything he did; changed every game. No wonder it made Mycroft sick.

John blinked, eyes narrowing as if he hadn’t expected Sherlock to ask. What gave him that idea, Sherlock wasn’t one to know.

Sherlock drew him closer, knowing he wasn’t playing fair, that he was skirting the rule; manipulating, but he’d pull every dirty trick in the book if it meant that John would choose him.

“I-” John wouldn’t meet his eyes, not until Sherlock forced him to with a finger to tip his chin up. “What about Moriarty? Are you going to let him go?”

_ What? _

“What?”

John licked his lips and set his jaw like he would when he was gearing up for a fight. “I mean, are you going to let Jim… do whatever he does? It can’t be good.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes, scanning John over once, and then twice. Was it a trick question? What was the right answer? What was John playing at? If Sherlock said no, would he leave?

“I tried years back. There’s nothing I can do about Moriarty.”

John tilted his head, and Sherlock knew he was cogitating, mulling over the words and deciding if Sherlock was worth it the second time around.

John swept his tongue over his lower lip again, and this time Sherlock saw it for what it was. John was nervous.

“If —Sherlock, he’s dangerous,” John said, eyes going bleak as he seemed to dredge up some terrible memory. The talk, Sherlock realized, when Moriarty had threatened their relationship those years ago. “What if he targets you, like he threatened to do last time?”

“Then I will handle it, John,” Sherlock reassured. Moriarty was the last person he wanted to talk about. The same should be true for John. “I don’t care what he wants John, but you’re back and that’s all I can bloody think about right now, as dreadful as that is.”

John’s eyes softened, regarding him solemnly. With a breath, his shoulders drooped, and he relaxed into Sherlock’s hands. “I’ll make a terrible flatmate,” he grumbled. “I… I frequently have nightmares.”

Sherlock grinned, unable to curtail the bubbling excitement. John was going to stay with him, and things could go back to how they were. It would take some time, and obviously, Sherlock still had some anger to work through, but they could do it together.

“I frequently play the violin, sometimes in the early hours. I chain smoke when I’m thinking, and I have a thing for a little blond man in bondage.”

John raised an eyebrow at the last bit. “Little blond men?”

“Man,” Sherlock corrected curtly. “A little blond  _ man _ . Singular.”

John chuckled and Sherlock couldn’t resist the urge to reel him in and catch his lips.

Never again. He’d never let John Watson go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if you enjoyed the chapter and join me on [tumblr](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com) where I release all the latest updates on my stories. You miss a little, you miss a lot! Thanks for reading :D


	5. The Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a day of reconnections for both Sherlock and John.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! So I know it's been a long time. I sincerely apologize for how long it's taken to get this chapter out but life has been insanely busy. Can't say that I'm unhappy about that, though. Once again, thank you so much to my betas [Morgan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgan_Elektra/pseuds/Morgan_Elektra) and [Crickette](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Crickette/pseuds/Crickette) for their awesome work in helping me get this chapter out. You both are amazing! 
> 
> Anyways, I shan't tarry. On with the show!

Much to Sherlock’s dismay, the Work called and his plans for John and 221C had to be postponed. He’d prepared and left John at the flat with instructions to rest and sent a text to his assistant to have movers pack and deliver John’s meagre possessions to Baker Street.

The ride to the office building was mercifully brief. Sherlock directed the cabbie to pull into his personal entrance in the underground car park, relieving him from enduring any social interactions until he was safely on the top floor.

Outside of John, Sherlock preferred to keep any and all discourse at the bare minimum. Despite John’s former attempts to regulate Sherlock’s social behaviour, he would always consider himself to be a high-functioning sociopath; above the petty little problems and mundanity that humans in their ignorance loved to indulge in.

At times, Sherlock found himself peering out of his office windows at the swarm of activity in the district, humans about as big as worker ants from his vantage point, and just as singular in their thought processes as their aptitude for observation.

Annoyance and desperation made his skin crawl in a constant battle of keeping his wits about him in the face of a barrage of stupidity.

_ Why can’t people just  _ **think** _? _

_ Why is the only person intelligent enough to match my wits the most outrageously annoying being to walk the face of the planet? _

Sherlock could hardly fathom how his mood had plunged so sharply to the depths, but he posited that it could be attributed to his time with John being cut so abruptly short.

Fortunately, Liam was busy with a phone call and incapable of talking Sherlock’s ear off his bloody skull. The boy’s only saving grace was that he was exceptional at his job and a lot less of a distraction than John ever was. He’d had a few moments of regretting his decision to hire John when the only thing Sherlock could think about was making John ride his cock as they reviewed daily reports.

That had been unprecedented.

Sherlock had always been meticulous about keeping his work and private life separate, yet having John close to him felt like a necessity, _ was  _ a necessity. But rehiring him as a PA was no longer feasible. Now that John was a doctor in an official capacity, anything less than would be a disservice to all the hours he put into attaining his medical degree.

Sherlock sighed and let himself into his office, ignoring the tepid cup of tea on his desk as he claimed his chair. He ran his hand through his hair, shuddering as it pulled at his sore scalp, still sensitive from John’s death grip. He wanted to see what havoc he’d wreaked on John’s body, catalogue the bruises on his hips and watch the red marks fade from John’s back on account of the hardwood floors.

He hated this.

Sherlock hated how every waking thought was filled with John, every sense memory and every breath. He could already smell John’s scent permeating his clothes. John’s skin cells were beneath his fingernails, strands of his hair tangled in Sherlock’s own, the taste of his lips on Sherlock’s tongue. It was more than enough to drive him mad. Instead, Sherlock neither ruffled his hair to remove John’s nor washed his hands or sprayed cologne because he wanted it. He did, and he hated himself, because it was everything Mycroft ever taught him was wrong with humanity.

_ ‘Don’t get involved _ ,’ his brother would say. ‘ _ They’re not like us _ ,’ and yet like the biblical story of Eve being tempted by a serpent in the Garden of Eden, he’d fallen for the ruse and fell from his place above it all. Sherlock had become one of those very singular-minded people he’d always feared being compared to.

He closed his eyes against the wave of thoughts battering his brain and waited for the nausea to pass. He shook his head to clear his mind and blinked until the heavy slide of his lids lifted the fog and he could focus again.

While John’s presence had certainly thrown a spanner into the works, Sherlock still had a multi-million pound business to run and no one else would do it for him. It was either the Work or less savoury options to get him back on track, but now that John was back, one of those simply wouldn’t do.

The Work it was.

 

-

 

It was well past noon by the time Sherlock deigned to come up for a breath, rubbing his eyes as he sank back into his chair. A quick glance at his phone confirmed that it was indeed close at hand and still hadn’t emitted a single sound.

He itched to text John, to know that he was still safely ensconced in 221B and would be there when Sherlock returned.

It felt a bit like a dream, having John back in his life. Their reunion was nothing like he’d ever envisioned. In his mind palace, the scenario was always the same: John would show up at Baker Street and Sherlock would leave him on the doorstep, because there would be no possible way that Sherlock could forgive John for leaving without so much as a by your leave. And yet, Sherlock had been the one to seek John out, to bring him home and care for him as if  _ he’d  _ been the one left to wonder.

Were it anyone else, Sherlock would have sneered at them, called them weak, and he didn’t have to wonder that it was exactly what Mycroft thought of him.

“Mr Holmes?”

Fortunately, a knock at the door brought Sherlock’s reverie to a grinding halt. He didn’t need the extra time to think.

“Liam, come in,” he said, watching as the boy scuttled through the door with a furtive glance over his shoulder.

“Erm, you have a visitor, Mr Holmes. A Mr Victor Trevor here to see you.”

The man himself peeked around the door, dark eyes darting around the room in wonder as he took in the view. “Never thought I’d see the great Holmes lair at the top of the mountain, but mate I’ve got to tell you, this is  _ quite  _ posh.”

Sherlock stood, buttoning his jacket as Victor sauntered in, confident and raffish in his floral print suit and unbound locks. He threw a dimpled smile toward Liam as the boy lingered in the doorway, fidgeting.

“Ah, Victor,” Sherlock greeted, stepping into Victor’s outstretched arms just as he’d always done with his old friend. Obviously business was going well as Victor had put on a few pounds, but the look suited him well. His jawline was a bit rounder, shoulders broader and he looked the happiest that Sherlock had seen him since their uni days. “Come sit. Would you like anything to drink?”

Sherlock led them to his designated meeting area, two chairs settled in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a skyline view of the Wharf, Thames and beyond.

“Tea would be excellent,” Victor replied, collapsing into his seat with a huff. “God, if I’m not careful, I might just take a kip in this chair.”

Sherlock smirked, picturing his friend trying to curl his long legs against the back of the chair. Much like Sherlock, he caught his naps wherever he could. Both of them ran on little sleep for days and when the urge to rest hit, being picky was not an option.

“Be my guest.”

Sherlock dismissed Liam to retrieve a tray of biscuits and tea before turning and regarding Victor with a reserved look. “Irene told you, then.”

Victor smiled softly, leaning forward to place a hand briefly on Sherlock’s knee. “Of course. You know she still comes to me for custom gowns and the like. She’s good for business.” Victor paused to mull over his words before continuing. “She says she hasn’t heard from you since your John showed up out of the blue. I got a bit worried…”

Sherlock pressed his lips together, thinking it better not to tell Victor to piss off. He was only concerned for Sherlock’s well-being just as Sherlock would be for his if the situation were reversed. It appeared that wherever John was involved, rationality was merely a second thought.

“Everything is… fine,” Sherlock responded, opting for reticence. “John and I have been in contact —”

A loud snore cut into his careful response, drawing Sherlock’s annoyed glare to the exaggeratedly slumped figure in the other chair. With a snort, Victor snapped his head up. He returned Sherlock’s petulant grimace with a grin of his own. “Oh, sorry, sorry. Bullshit sort of makes me sleepy.”

Sherlock scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You’ve obviously been spending too much time with the Americans.”

Victor laughed, his dark eyes sparkling with mischief. “What can I say? We can learn a thing or two from the Americans about having fun. It’s not so prim and proper across the pond.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I see,” Victor nodded. “Now, out with it.”

Sherlock huffed and averted his gaze out the window, knowing that Victor wouldn’t stop until he had his answers. Sometimes he could be as bad as Mycroft.

“Sherlock, I don’t know what you think I’m going to say, but I certainly won’t judge you for it,” Victor soothed, sensing Sherlock’s mounting frustration with the topic and his reluctance to speak on it.

Sherlock shot up from his chair and stalked to the window, hands jammed in his pockets.

It was like having rabid little terriers nipping at his heels. Everyone wanted to know what was happening between he and John when no one had a right to that information but the two of them. It was bad enough that the first time around, the media had caught wind of it. Couldn’t people just let them work it out on their own? Sherlock certainly didn’t need brown-nosers like  _ Mycroft  _ or any of them butting into his business.

“While I appreciate your concern, Victor, it really is none of your business,” Sherlock murmured, peering down at the thriving intersection below.  

Behind him, Victor cleared his throat. “I understand.”

Just then, Liam returned with the refreshments, placed them on the side table adjacent to their chairs, and ducked out just as quickly as he’d entered.

A soft  _ whish  _ of silk sliding across leather heralded Victor’s presence at his side, the sun glinting magnificently off of his mahogany skin. “I’m engaged.”

Sherlock froze, unsure whether to congratulate first or search Victor’s person for a ring he couldn’t have possibly missed. Not to say that he wasn’t happy for his friend, but it didn’t move him in any particular way.

That was how he was used to responding to such news. If Sherlock couldn’t muster up any sort of feigned exuberance for his friend, then how was it that anything concerning John could wipe his mind clean of everything but him, bring him as close to arrhythmia without any true medical reasoning?

“Congratulations,” Sherlock said, not sure what else to say. “American, I presume?”

Victor smirked, “Norwegian, actually. You know I go for that tall, lissome look. He’s a wonderful muse. Reminds me a bit of Tilda Swinton.”

Sherlock snickered, though the smile faded when he noticed Victor’s pitying stare in his peripheral.

Victor licked his lips before speaking. “You know, the fact that you didn’t figure that out the moment I walked in just tells me there’s a lot going on up here,” he stated, tapping a finger against his temple.

Sherlock turned to Victor, noticing for the first time all of the signs. The added weight, flushed cheeks, the indent of a band around Victor’s ring finger, the length of chain that dipped beneath Victor’s shirt and ended in a circular impression. All of it pointed toward a man in love —a man  _ engaged _ — and Sherlock hadn’t deduced it as he would have before. Perhaps Victor had a point.

Sherlock turned to him fully, head tilted. “What do you suppose I do?”

Victor shrugged. “Well, take a bit of time off. Get yourself sorted—and by yourself, I do mean you and John—then you can get back to being Sherlock Holmes, the great narcissistic arsehole CEO of Holmes Pharmaceuticals and pseudo-detective.”

Sherlock raised his chin defiantly and glared down his nose at his friend. “That’s  _ consulting  _ detective.”

“Oh, so sorry,” Victor sniggered, crossing his arms. His smile suddenly dimmed and he swallowed, seeming unsure of himself for the first time. “One last thing…”

Sherlock groaned, turning his back on Victor to whisk up the tea kettle and an empty cup. “What now?” He grumbled, pouring steaming water into the ceramic.

“Ella is a certified psychiatrist now. She’s got a nice little office not very far from here, actually…”

Sherlock paused, staring down into his cup where he’d placed his tea bag. There was something riveting about watching it bob up and down serenely, a direct counter to his torrential thoughts as he tried to make sense of what Victor was trying to say.

Sherlock slowly placed the kettle back on the tray and avoided Victor’s gaze as he reclaimed his chair. “What are you implying, Victor? You know I don’t like riddles.”

The clack of Victor’s heels over the lacquered wood signalled his approach.

“What I mean to say is that I  _ know  _ that after being in a place like Afghanistan, it’s not always easy to reintegrate into society.”

Sherlock glanced up, only to be held captive by the warmth and understanding in Victor’s liquid brown eyes. “Your father.”

Victor nodded, dropping his eyes to where his fingers were wound together in his lap. “Yeah. He didn’t always have such an easy time of it.”

Victor’s father had been an American soldier who’d emigrated to the UK after the Vietnam War where he’d met Victor’s mother, an immigrant from Jamaica. Sherlock had never met him, but Victor would often talk about what he remembered of his father. He’d died of liver cancer when Victor was ten.

“Mum never could get him off the drink, no matter how many times she threatened to leave,” Victor sighed. “Listen, all I’m saying is that if you think John needs the help, give Ella a call and she’ll schedule him in.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to object, but Victor halted him with a raised hand. “I know you think you can handle it, Sherlock, but don’t let your pride get in the way of getting John help.”

As much as it bothered Sherlock to think that there might be a problem with John that he couldn’t solve, it wasn’t the first time that he wondered if he were out of his depth. John was obviously dealing with some trauma, Sherlock’s initial and second visit had made that clear, but John would likely resent him for getting involved. Surely, John would take it as an affront and vanish into the sunset for another six years. It was a risk Sherlock wasn’t sure he was ready to take.

But if there was even a slight chance of getting his John back, the man he was before the war, Sherlock would try.

He nodded, steepling his fingers against his lips.

Silence reigned for a moment longer before Victor clapped once and rubbed his hands together. “Right. Enough o’ that. Let’s talk about you being my best man.”

Sherlock smiled, relaxing as they sank into their familiar snarky prose. Back into safe territory.

 

-

 

The moving company was just pulling away when Sherlock returned to Baker Street that evening carrying a warm take-away bag with John’s favourite meal from Angelo’s. The light beyond the first-floor window was just barely visible in the twilight, and Sherlock felt thrill like a sharp zing of electricity shoot up his spine at the thought of a night in with John. 

Mrs Hudson’s door was firmly closed, unusually quiet, before Sherlock remembered that it was her Ladies Night with Ms Turner and Mrs Margaret from three doors down, who owned a novelty bookshop Sherlock occasionally frequented.

Sherlock strode up the stairs to 221B and inside, his gaze scouring the room for a sign of John.

“John!” He called as he shrugged his coat off and hung it on the rack beside the door.

“In here,” John returned from the kitchen. And then softer, “Just whipping something up.”

In the kitchen, John was standing at the hob, hovering over a pot of boiling noodles and a pan of bubbling tomato sauce.

The kitchen was chaotic, as Sherlock preferred it to be; everything was right where he wanted it, save for a small space on the table that had been cleared to make room for a couple of plates. Sherlock set the bag from Angelo’s atop a stack of papers and skirted around the table to stand beside John.

“You didn’t have to cook,” Sherlock said, smirking down at John. It felt like only yesterday that they were arguing over whether or not John would make him dinner. That had also been the day John met Victor Trevor and the night of their first scene playing with suspension bondage. John had been beautiful in his defiance and elegant in his submission. Sherlock remembered it well, the moment that John willingly dropped to his knees before Sherlock and offered himself up.

There had been no other choice but to accept. 

Now, John stared up at him with the same eyes, perhaps a little more guarded, but so wonderfully unshakeable.

“Yes, well… don’t get used to it,” John said, smiling down at the boiling red sauce hissing and popping around his wooden spoon.

Sherlock inched closer until there was only a small breadth of space between them. “Save it for later,” he ordered. “I’ve got you something anyway.”

John turned his head toward the take-away bag on the table and raised a brow, the corners of his lips fighting a grin. “Angelo’s risotto?” he asked, tilting his head toward the food.  

Sherlock nodded, unable to tear his eyes away as John lifted the wooden spoon and blew on the sauce before testing it. Watching his pink tongue dart out to lick away the remnants made his limbs feel weak and loose and his breath stutter in his throat.  

“How about this,” John began, placing the spoon on a serviette beside the hob. “I'll eat the risotto and you can eat the spaghetti.”

Sherlock dropped his head until their foreheads nearly touched, staring at John beneath hooded lids. “And what's in it for me?”

Instantly, the air between them grew thick with suggestion, neither of them daring nor willing to look away first.

John shrugged, aiming for nonchalance, but the heat of his gaze spoke louder than his actions ever would. Although he refused to verbalize it, John wore the signs of attraction like a neon sign, loud and glaring.

“Fine,” Sherlock agreed and reluctantly retreated to take a seat at the table.

Withdrawing didn't necessarily mean surrendering, as he was afforded an unhindered view of John's arse in those godforsaken corduroy trousers. While the clothing wasn't the easiest on the eyes, it hugged him well, sitting sweetly along the curve of his arse. However, the jumper was hideous and oversized, and did nothing to emphasize John's new musculature.

“If you’ve got nothing better to do than stare at my arse all night, the least you could do is make yourself useful,” John commented with a wry smirk.

Sherlock leaned back in his chair and regarded his— _ lover? Companion? Friend? Ex? _ —John moving effortlessly around his— _ their _ —kitchen with something like awe. Awe and a voracious need that buried itself in his belly and unfurled bright and hungry.

He sank further into his seat, extending his legs in a long, languid stretch as his eyes wandered up that trim waist to a set of narrow shoulders that he could hardly wait to sink his teeth into.

John turned when Sherlock failed to respond with one of his signature quick-witted quips, and stopped, startled by the intensity of Sherlock’s stare.

Sherlock could feel his cheeks flush, grow warmer as John raised his chin and inadvertently exposed the blushing column of his neck. He felt like plundering, pillaging, taking John for everything he was worth because six years worth of loneliness, all of them without John, was enough to drive him to insanity. John—flesh and bones and blood and sinew—was standing in his kitchen as if none of it had ever happened and Sherlock was seesawing between anger and a desire that thrummed through his body like a magnetic field, haplessly drawn to the man across the room.

“Sherlock,” John started, but Sherlock was loath to let him finish. There were so many things that still needed to be said, but the air was already thick enough to cut with scalpels and far too weighted for words.

It was John who made the first move.

His advance was slow, cautious, and Sherlock was riveted to his every step. Curiously, the moment seemed to play out in slow motion. While logically, Sherlock understood that space and time were absolute, the relativity of such principles were rendered moot in the face of everything that was happening in that tiny bit of room between himself and John.

John gingerly stepped over Sherlock’s feet and pushed into his space until John’s knees were flush against his inner thighs. For a moment, they stayed like that; trapped in one another’s orbit like hopeless moons, constantly revolving around the other.

It was completely frustrating, being in love. Sherlock could admit that he was in unfamiliar territory. A thousand experiments couldn’t prepare him for an endeavour of such magnitude as caring for another person. In some ways it felt like ruin, while in others he was invigorated.

Perhaps ordinary people weren’t so dull if they could carry such emotions their entire lives. Before, Sherlock would have slit his wrists or even muddle through an evening with Mycroft if it meant not being another casualty of sentiment. But with John there, invading his space— _ his life, his mind, everything _ —Sherlock would be remiss in denying his affection for him.

His composure was tearing at the seams, thread by thread, until he could no longer restrain himself from reaching out to touch, just a finger over John’s hand, still limp by his side.

John allowed it, staring down at him with dilated indigo eyes and parted lips from which issued quick, stilted breaths.

Encouraged, Sherlock took John’s hand and pulled him forward, reveling in the intimacy of their closeness. At last, John reciprocated, pushing his hands into the hair at the nape of Sherlock’s neck while his own latched onto the back of those corduroyed thighs and stroked.

Sherlock could do nothing but hold his breath as John licked his lips, his nerves written all over his face as he prepared to speak. Finally, he said, “The noodles are congealing—”

“Oh  _ God,  _ shut up and kiss me, John,” Sherlock rolled his eyes and huffed. And without any more preamble, John did just that.

What was probably meant to be a tender moment progressed quickly, escalating from short, close-mouthed nibbles to wet, desperate and demanding. It was like having his first gulp of water following a drought, indulging in the moist heat of John’s mouth, blunt-tipped fingers tugging on his hair and a rigid cock twitching to life against his sternum.

He groaned, pulling John’s lip between his teeth. Sherlock could still taste the tomato sauce on his tongue, the piquant bite of peppers and oregano, and the smallest hint of garlic. He wanted more, had to get closer.

Sherlock stood, ignoring the chair as it fell on its back, and wrapped his hands around John’s waist to close the gap between them. 

John broke away with a gasp, chest heaving as he breathed sharply through his nose.

“Upstairs, now,” Sherlock demanded and stepped away from John before they got carried away. The kitchen was hardly the appropriate place for what he had planned. John didn’t bother arguing. He nodded and pivoted, straight-backed and shoulders squared as he made for the exit.

Sherlock waited until he heard John’s footsteps on the staircase before checking to make sure the hob was clicked off.

He turned to leave but John's cane leaning innocuously against the table caught his eye.  __

_ ‘Psychosomatic, as I assumed.’  _ Sherlock thought with a nod. John was a man that needed a purpose, and Sherlock would gladly give him that.

There was one last thing he needed to check on before joining John in 221C.

In his room, Sherlock pulled a long wooden box from the back of his sock index, under a row of meticulously organized, colour-coded hose. Inside was a riding crop he’d bought a few years ago but never put to use. He hadn’t intended to let it go to waste, but Sherlock hadn’t been able to bring himself to use it on any of the men he paid for sex. 

It was a bit like his old one, save a few centimetres shorter and a wider leather tip to spread out the impact zone. The only thing that would differ is that John would be the only man to taste its leather on his skin. New beginnings and all.

Sherlock removed the riding crop, but he still had one more thing to look for. This, he’d purchased when he still held out hope that he’d hear from John again, even when it had been years since. By that point, he was simply coping; it had been a weak, maudlin moment. Now, Sherlock kept it because the mere thought of selling it back felt too much like surrender.

Beneath the baseboard of the box, there had been enough room to fit a small rectangular box.

Sherlock lifted the top to reveal a platinum bracelet with only the inscription,  _ SH,  _ so that if John ever returned, he’d still know to whom he belonged. But it was too soon to be thinking that way. The two of them were hardly on stable ground.

Sherlock returned the box and baseboard and replaced the whole lot back beneath his sock index, sans riding crop.

He was preparing to leave the room when he heard the faint, but undeniable creak of the 14th step, followed by the sound of a confident knock.

It couldn’t be Lestrade. He would have called before making the trip, and most certainly would avoid making that mistake again after walking in on them that morning. Clients were usually more hesitant to intrude, especially during the evening hours. A quick glance at his watch revealed that it was well past eight.

Sherlock stood, perplexed as he tossed the riding crop on the bed and went to answer the door. His skin prickled with excitement at the knowledge that it could quite possibly be Moriarty. Now that he’d resurfaced, it was hard to predict what he would do.

Sherlock loathed the man, but he must admit that Moriarty made a brilliant foe.

However, when he opened the door, Sherlock knew instantly this was neither Moriarty or anything that could bode well for his plans with John for the night.

The woman— _ mid-40s, callused fingers  _ (labourer) _ , disciplinarian, coarse blonde hair  _ (incredibly familiar) _ , vivid green eyes, modest but of some wealth in her retirement  _ (inheritance) _ , the shape of her eyes _ —frowned at Sherlock with a shrewd gaze that grew frayed at the edges the longer he went without saying a word. Finally, the man accompanying her— _ husband, office worker _ (also retired) _ , receding hairline  _ (will most certainly lose the hair on his crown within the next two years),  _ dull brown hair streaked through with silver, gardener, a jaw structure similar to _ —stepped forward with a polite, but strained smile.

“Sorry to pop up on you at this hour,” the man said. “I’m Rupert, and this is my wife, Julia. We’re looking for John Watson. We were told he’d be here.”

Confused—and perhaps even a bit baffled—Sherlock continued to stare wordlessly, until the woman abruptly pushed past him and into the flat.

“John!” She shouted. “John Watson!”

From upstairs, a muffled thump and then John’s hobbling steps on the landing. “Mum?”

That was all she needed to hear before the woman clamped a hand over her mouth and gasped into it.

From the door, the old man made a soft broken noise as John shuffled down the stairs.

As the shock wore off, anger replaced it in spades as the answer to this madness became clear. This had Mycroft written all over it, the pompous, interfering  _ twit! _

After a moment of silent standoff between the four of them, Sherlock moved to take his place just behind John, who’d entered the room and was studiously avoiding everyone’s eyes, to offer his presence as support in the ambush of his brother’s making.

“John Hamish Watson, how  _ dare _ you,” Julia whispered, and Sherlock could see John’s flinch from where he stood, how he turned his head away from his mother and pressed his trembling lips together. “You left without a word and came  _ back _ without a bloody word, how could you do that to us!”

John’s shoulders slumped. “Mum—”

Suddenly, she surged forward, followed by the sharp clap of her palm against his cheek.

“Julia!” Rupert admonished, startled, at the same time that Sherlock moved to check him for damage, though was halted by a quick glare of warning from John.

Just that quickly, the woman had wrapped her arms around her son, crushing him close to her. Behind her, Rupert drew closer as well and laid a hand on the crown of John’s head where it rested on his mother’s shoulder.

Sherlock stood back and observed, uncertain as to whether he should remove himself from the room and give John the time needed with his parents, and frozen by the desire to stay near John in case his presence was needed.

After several seconds, Julia pushed away from the hug and paced to the window, a frown sat heavily upon her brows. “Not one call, Johnny, save a few  _ measly letters _ ,” she spat. “Excuse me for thinking I’ve raised you up better than that and your father and I meant more to you than a scrap of paper to tell us you’d run off to join the military!”

John ran a hand through his hair and started to approach her, but Julia warded him off with a hand and a stern look. “Mum, I’m—”

“Don’t!” She hissed. “I’m  _ so  _ cross  with you right now, John. And the worst part of it is, you know how hard it’s been on your father and I, what with Harry—”

She cut herself off  and walked to the couch, slumping down on it with a huffed breath. Her eyes glistened in the lamp light as she regarded her son with crushed disappointment. The way she was capable of saying many things with a single look spoke volumes as to who John took after.

Rupert cleared his throat carefully before saying his piece. “What your mother means to say, John—”

“I said exactly what I meant to say, Rupert,” Julia snapped from the couch.

“Julia, you’ve had your say. Let me speak,” Rupert forged on with calm authority. “Your mother and I aren’t sure what made you run off to some dreadful desert, but I believe you owe it to us to provide an explanation,” here he turned to his wife. “And we owe it to him to listen.”

Julia sniffled and folded further into the couch, arms crossed over her chest as she pointedly glared straight ahead.

“But first... it has been a long time, my boy,” Rupert acknowledged and embraced his son.

Sherlock looked away as John buried his face into his father’s chest, shoulders shaking though he made no sound whatsoever. He had to shove his hands in his pockets in order to avoid pulling John away and out of the room; away from the mess Mycroft created in all of his pettiness.

However, when Sherlock tore his eyes away from father and son, they immediately locked with a less forgiving pair.

There was something to be said about a woman that could quail a grown man with a single look. Sherlock never startled easily, and he was almost always the most feared in the room, but Julia Watson had him firmly beat.

She was John’s defiance, his rage and anger personified.

In this instance, it would appear that Sherlock would not be spared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and it's always nice to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment below. Con-crit is always welcome. Join me on [tumblr](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com) for all things Sherlockian and updates about current and future projects. Also, Crickette and I have created a blog dedicated strictly to reccing stories we think don't get enough attention. We call them our hidden gems, so please join us on our [Baker Street Irregulars](http://baker-street-irregulars-recs.tumblr.com/) blog if you're interested!


	6. The Truth of It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Julia Watson is angry and Sherlock is figuring out that emotions aren't black and white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here we are, you guys. Back at it again post S4 and still going strong. Thank you to my beta Morgan for her patience and the dedication she puts into helping me churn out shiny new chapters. Also, to my muse and good friend, [Crickette](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Crickette/pseuds/Crickette), who kicked my arse into gear so that I can present this chapter to all of you! 
> 
> Thank you to my loyal readers for sticking with me and I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I did writing it.

It was approaching midday when they received the call. A well-spoken man with the gravitas of a politician and a voice like polished stones claimed that he had information on the whereabouts of her son, and it was all Julia could do to keep herself upright. 

Rupert, entering from the backyard, noticed her distress immediately and rushed to her side as Julia sank down onto the couch.

“I understand that this may come as a surprise to you, Mrs Watson,” the man drawled. It made her bristle. “John Watson was invalided from Her Majesty’s Armed Forces after his unit was ambushed during a routine patrol.”

Julia gasped and clutched her aching chest as she tried to make some sort of sense of what this mysterious man was trying to tell her. He couldn’t possibly be talking about her Johnny, her little boy.

“Who is this?” Julia choked out. “And where is my son?”

The man was silent for a moment, long enough for Julia to snap, “Tell me!”

“I’m an interested party, one might say. I’ve reason to believe that your son may be residing in London with a person of... questionable motives, if I’m to be quite frank, Mrs Watson.”

Beside her, Rupert eased her hand away from her chest and wrapped it in his own, eyebrows furrowed in curiosity.

“Where?” Her heart was pounding away in her chest as she thought of seeing her baby boy after six years, all of which she spent using whatever remnants of faith she had left praying for John’s safe return.  

“If you can be ready in two hours, I’ll send a car to take you to his location.”

She closed her eyes, fighting back tears as she thought of getting to hug her son again, touch his face and look into his eyes. And although he wasn’t there in the flesh just yet, her shoulders felt less weighted than they had five minutes before, like she could breathe easier.

The absence of both her daughter Harriet and John was crippling. There was never a day she didn’t devote hours to trailing back and forth between the shrines of her children’s rooms, thinking of a time when there were two giggling toddlers shouting through the walls. Guilt and longing ravaged her insides and kept her mind near constantly preoccupied. She could think of little else but her children.

“I’ll need your answer, Mrs Watson,” the man urged, dragging Julia out of her introspection.

Julia gripped her husband’s hand, steadied by his calm presence. “Fine, yes. Of course. Do you need my address?”

“That won’t be necessary. A vehicle will be there within the next two hours.” Message delivered, the line went dead with a muted click.

“Julia?” Rupert whispered, dropping her hand to embrace her as the shock finally set in. She couldn’t believe it; she may just have to go to church on Sunday, because surely God must have answered her countless prayers.

Rupert roused her with a gentle squeeze. “Sweetheart, is it John… is he alright?”

Julia shook her head, turning into his chest as an amalgam of emotions crashed over her. For years it seemed a wave hovered over her head just waiting to come slamming down, and it certainly had. Julia could hardly breathe beneath the weight of it.

Rupert needed to know. He’d been as hurt as she when they got the letter in the post. She had to say something, to explain, but Julia couldn’t get her mouth to work.

They sat there for a while, just holding one another until she got herself together.

Julia pulled away and offered a tight smile as Rupert wiped away her tears with his calloused thumbs. His touch was familiar, grounding.

Finally, she took her husband’s hands in between her own and met his hopeful brown eyes.

“It’s John,” she breathed. “Our little boy is hurt, but he’s going to be okay. He’s going to be fine.”

Her John was strong and resilient and frustratingly stubborn. He’d be just fine.

On the way to the city, Julia kept reminding herself of that in the hopes that it would soothe her worries, but every instinct told her otherwise.

 

-

 

She was halfway to mad when the car eventually came to a stop in front of a three-storey residential building.

The driver had been curt and tight-lipped about where they were going and the man she’d spoken to over the phone was notably absent. It was all very cloak-and-dagger, and by the time she was ascending the steps to the first floor flat, upon instruction from the driver, her nerves had been strained to the snapping point.

She’d been expecting the worst: Her son bandaged and crippled, languishing in front of a window and dead to the world. She’d fretted the entire way there that John had been taken hostage by some unsavoury brute intent on taking advantage of his lowly state.

What she hadn’t been expecting was the man who answered the door.

He was tall, towering over she and Rupert by at least seven inches, and slender. There was nothing cohesive about his features; a proud nose, prominent forehead beneath a swath of dark curls, a deeply-bowed lip, strong jaw, and piercing, narrow eyes. None of his attributes seemed to quite fit, yet they all coalesced to form a rather striking physiognomy.

His pristine suit screamed wealth, from the handsewn hem of his trousers to the cotton collar of his pressed shirt.

The moment that acute stare fell on her, Julia was aware of every inch of height difference and the way the stranger wore affluence like a second skin. She hated the searing quality of his gaze, how it made her feel like a frog pinioned to a dissecting pan. There was something about him that instantly alarmed her, though she couldn’t say if it was his forbidding disposition or that Julia wouldn’t be remiss in concluding that somehow he knew all her secrets without her saying a word.

Rupert, never one to be cowed by a shrewd look, was the first to break the silence.

Even then, not even Rupert’s polite introduction could move the man. He seemed to be in a trance, mumbling beneath his breath as his eyes flickered over her and her husband, respectively.

The man was mad, obviously, and Julia didn’t have time for it. Her son was closer than he’d been in years and she needed to see him, to confirm with her own eyes that he was okay.

Julia shoved past the man and into the flat, overcome with fury and hurt and the need to  _ know _ . She screamed her son’s name and didn’t breathe until his silhouette appeared at the top of the staircase, a hunched, defeated thing she could hardly recognize.

“Mum?”

Her knees nearly buckled at the sound of his voice, sweet and faint.

It reminded her of a beautiful, round-faced toddler with cornflour hair, following her round the house. John had been a precious child and later in life, a considerate, lovely young man. Then he’d gone and Julia would spend hours sitting in her son’s vacant room, staring at his pictures on the wall because it was all she had to keep herself sane.

Anger and relief warred within her. She had no time to prepare to send her son off to a war. Is a mother ever ready to give her child up if there’s a chance she would never see them again?

He was limping, leaning heavily on a cane as he descended the steps. John held himself stiffly, and she could see from where she stood that his left shoulder sagged lower than the right. Dark, puffy bruises undercut his indigo eyes, highlighted his sunken cheeks and the lack of something vital missing from her son’s eyes.

John drew closer, hesitant and weary, like a man with an albatross slung about his neck. He was unwilling to meet her gaze. Julia wondered what he thought he’d see there, what he  _ would  _ see if he looked at her.

She felt betrayal above all, bright and sparking like a livewire as she whispered his name and commanded his attention. John owed her that much, to look into her eyes and see how much his absence hauled her spirit over the coals.

It didn’t take long before she was lashing out, so angry, so  _ bitter.  _ Six years of her son’s life she would never get back, all of which were Hell because she didn’t know if a sodding letter in the post was all she’d have to remember her little boy by. She slapped him and was not sorry for it, but the need to embrace him overrode anything else she might have said or done.

John was so thin in her arms, a waif compared to the healthy young man she last saw. His back trembled beneath her hands and the realisation came slamming into her that she’d been given the chance to hold her baby close again rather than the devastating alternative of standing over a casket.

Bile rose up her throat at the visual. It made her doubly angry, just thinking of standing over a headstone and knowing,  _ knowing _ how grossly she’d failed her children. It would have killed her.

Then there was  _ him _ . The man.

As they all prepared for the ensuing discussion, she found herself observing him and the way he hovered protectively near her son.

“Mum, dad, this is… my friend, Sherlock Holmes…” John made the introductions with more apprehension than Julia thought was warranted, especially if this man was just a friend, though she suspected that wasn’t entirely true. Not when the man looked upon her son with an amount of possessiveness that bordered on intimacy. “Julia and Rupert Watson,” John said, stepping back.

“Pleasure,” Sherlock murmured, offering his hand for a perfunctory shake before striding off toward what looked like the kitchen while the three of them settled into their seats. From her vantage point, she could see the clutter of beakers and test tubes as well as papers strewn about the table. In the midst of it all, a microscope. A scientist of some sort, then, Julia gathered. “Tea, I think.”

While their apparent host tinkered round in the kitchen, Rupert managed to drag succinct answers from John’s stiffened lips. Every few seconds, she would catch his eyes as they flitted toward her and away.

Sherlock returned with a platter of tea and placed it gingerly on the coffee table. With a nervous gesture that seemed out of place on the man, Sherlock straightened and wiped his hands on his trousers.

“Tea,” he waggled his fingers at the tray and went for his seat, scraping a hand through his curls.

No one bothered reaching for the tea. The silence settled between them, a harbinger for the approaching storm.

John cleared his throat and three sets of eyes snapped to him, each with varying levels of desperation. Though Julia hardly knew the strange man, there was something familiar about the way he couldn’t tear his eyes away from John. Like he was afraid that John would disappear if he looked away for too long. His gaze lingered in random places, seeing things in her son that Julia couldn’t begin to comprehend. He’d been left behind, too.

“Um,” John looked away and shook his head. “I know it’s shit… what I did, mum. Dad.” His eyes flicked to Sherlock, then down. “To all of you.”

Julia always thought that the day John returned, she’d be overjoyed. Happy. Instead, she felt hollowed out with grief. The more he spoke, the more her throat thickened with sorrow and anger. She wanted to know  _ why _ . Why, when he had parents who loved him, would do anything to keep him safe?

“Was it something that we did?” Rupert asked, quiet and uncertain.

John pressed his lips together as he shook his head, a vehement negation, but clearly not enough to tell her what she needed to know.

“Why, then?” She snapped. “I’m sure you know. Six years ought to have been enough time to come up with a good enough excuse for you to piss off to Afghanistan! Without a word! Without a  _ call! _ ”

John wrapped his arms around himself, shoulders hunching as her tirade gained momentum.

“Six years, Johnny, and all you’ve got are sorries? I haven’t the patience for it. I don’t  _ want  _ apologies. I want to know why, John? Wh—”

“Because I needed something for me, mum!” John exploded. As if that outburst had taken all the wind out of his sails, John slumped into his seat. “I can’t be there just to fill a void for you and for dad.” He met Sherlock’s narrowed eyes. “And I can’t be your crutch.”

Julia’s vision blurred, distorting her son’s anguished features until she blinked and the soft tickle of tears skated down her cheeks.

“I can’t make up for Harry’s absence.” John paused to clear his throat, but his voice remained brittle when he spoke. “I was never going to be able to live up to that.”

Julia blinked, unsure of herself for the first time since she walked through those doors. She felt cold. Never in a millions years had she considered the idea that maybe she was asking too much of her son or laying burdens on his shoulder that didn’t belong there. There were times where she felt she had to hold on even harder to her son, because he was her baby. Thought maybe she hadn’t given enough attention to Harry, so her daughter went to find it elsewhere.

She stood and crossed the short space to kneel by her son’s seat. She settled a hand on his cheek and angled his face toward her. “Why didn’t you tell us? There’s no way we could have known if you—”

“Because you didn’t do anything wrong, mum. You and dad are the best parents anyone could ask for. I just… I needed this for me. It had nothing to do with you.” John shook his head. “Admittedly, it was an impulsive decision, and… I’m sorry, mum.”

She hadn’t heard him approach, but was hardly surprised when Rupert knelt on the opposite side. He raked a gentle hand through John’s hair. “Never think that you can’t come and talk to us, my boy. That’s what we’re here for.” Rupert smiled, a small, sad thing. “We love you and we love Harriet, and never would we try to substitute one for the other.”

John nodded, eyes glassy and red as he tried to stifle his emotions.

“Good,” Julia breathed. “Come here.”

She pulled her Johnny close and kissed the crown of his head, finding relief in the familiar scent of him and the baby soft strands of his hair brushing her cheek.

She breathed in, content to find that the weight on her chest was finally dissipating.

 

-

 

Julia stepped into the kitchen as Rupert and her son spoke quietly near the door. They’d cried themselves silly and then talked for an hour. At some point, Sherlock had disappeared, but Julia wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d gone very far. 

She found him sitting at the kitchen table, peering into a microscope at a slide of murky, green liquid. He looked up when she drew near, and pushed away from the table.

“Mrs Watson,” Sherlock rumbled in a rich baritone. It wasn’t unpleasant to listen to, she thought absently.

She smiled, quick and polite, before it dropped off her lips. “You love him.”

The man’s brows furrowed, eyes searching as they flickered over her face.

“I’m still not quite sure about you, Mr Holmes, but if there’s one thing you should be aware of, it’s that I know when my son is hiding things.” She paused long enough to let that settle in. Sherlock’s brow rose in expectancy. “My husband mentioned a fellow quite a while back. I knew then that he was seeing someone, but Johnny has always been a private one.”

“Yes…” Sherlock stated, a bemused tilt to his downturned lips.

Julia folded her hands in front of her and met his gaze head on. “John’s always been a bit of an even-tempered lad. He was a sweet child, and moreso as he got older. Always respectful. Never rebellious.” Her face hardened. “You had more to do with this than he’s let on, of that I’m sure. At this point, it would be counterintuitive of me to persuade him to return home with me, so I’m entrusting him to your care. But Mr Holmes?"

Sherlock said nothing, but waited with his clamped lips and cold eyes that spoke volumes.

“If you hurt him again, I will be your very worst nightmare.”

Sherlock tilted his head in a vaguely reptilian way, computing, Julia realized, though she didn’t know what. It didn’t matter, as long as he processed her message.

Watching him, Julia got the feeling that his intelligence transcended ordinariness, the boundaries that most people limited themselves to. He was odd, but Julia saw where that would attract someone like John. But what was Sherlock’s motive?

It tore at her that she couldn’t discern it.

A warning would have to do for now, but Julia would certainly be doing her research on this strange man.

 

-

 

It was different, being back in his bed with someone else. For the last several years, Sherlock made it a point to meet his sexual partners at discreet locations. For one, he still had a reputation to uphold and although it never mattered to him much that he was a public figure, being scrutinized by the media was not something he reveled in. 

After seeing John’s parents out, John had taken Sherlock by the hand and pulled him through the kitchen and into the bedroom. Once there, they hadn't bothered with undressing before climbing into bed. Thoughts of ascending the stairs to the playroom had all but been relegated to another time.

Now they were laid out on their sides, facing one another and neither of them willing to look away first.

John’s head was pillowed into the crook of his arm, blond strands lit up like honey from the ambient street lights.

_ “Can’t be your crutch…”  _ The words hovered above John’s dozing head and crumbled like ashes. Is that what John presumed he meant to Sherlock? Just another addiction? Another submissive to fuck? Something to keep him tethered to the terrestrial realm? Keep Sherlock out of his own head?

Yes, he did those things and John was more of an addiction than Sherlock was comfortable admitting, but he was  _ so  _ much more.

Sherlock eased a hand across the bit of space between them and brushed a fingertip up John’s forearm, lingered over the knob of his wrist. “You’re not a crutch,” he murmured.

John closed his eyes. “Sherlock—”

“I… I never intended for you to feel that way. A crutch implies one that is only needed to fill a void, but I assure you, you’ve meant more to me than that for a long time now.” Sherlock cleared his throat, discomfited by his need to validate John’s position in his life as much for himself as for John.

“I’ve never needed people. In fact, I find the human race quite dismal. I’m constantly confounded that this species has successfully evolved to this point, considering Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection—”

“Sherlock. Get to the point.”

Sherlock huffed. “What I mean to say, John, is that... that I do. I do love you.” His heart was in his throat, a fast-paced thrum that made his breath stutter through his nose.

“Everything that comes with that isn’t always… pleasant, but… it is what it is,” he breathed. And that was that. His love for John came with undesirable consequences; he didn’t enjoy the Work any longer without John’s presence, his thought process was stunted and the only time he felt alive was when John was with him. It was horrifying, but he’d rather suffer through it than live another six years without John.

Sherlock wrapped his hand around a thin wrist and gently tugged.

John followed without hesitation, until his head fit comfortably into the crook of Sherlock’s neck.

A cozy silence cocooned them in the darkness, an intimacy Sherlock hadn’t afforded himself since John left for the army. He’d missed this; the proximity of John, the scent of him, touching him the way a lover should.

John’s hand skated under his shirt and Sherlock shivered beneath the touch. He turned his head and nosed John’s fringe aside, sought skin with his lips and trembled with want when at last he found it.

He leaned back and pulled John over him, groaning as John’s arse settled in his lap.

“John,” Sherlock sighed and helped John carefully remove his shirt, smiling at the way his hair rebelled against gravity. “Mm, your trousers. Take them off.”

John scrambled to do as asked, resulting in an errant knee trodding none-too-gently over Sherlock’s erection. He grunted and bucked John off with a scowl, only to be tempered with amusement as John struggled about beside him, fighting with the button on his trousers,

“These bloody things,” John grumbled, growling as he wrestled to release the button from the hole.

Sherlock snickered, earning himself a mullish glare from John before he took pity and reached over to help. “Honestly, John. I was under the impression you were of—at the very least—average intelligence. Perhaps I overestimated.”

John fell back against the bed with a huffed, “Fuck off,” before wrapping a hand around Sherlock’s neck and pulling him close.

“Ouch, careful,” John winced as Sherlock’s hand jostled the mattress beneath his wounded shoulder.

“Sorry,” Sherlock murmured before meeting John’s lips in a series of soft, chaste kisses. He felt blindsided by his emotions, overcome with a sense of urgency he couldn’t shake. His skin tingled wherever John touched, a subtle warmth that reverberated throughout his body. “Sorry.”

Sherlock turned to place a tender kiss on John’s shoulder and followed it up with an inquisitory brush. He stroked the sloped ridges of scar tissue beneath his fingerpads, cataloguing the colour of it as the scar began to take its permanent shape. Gunshot wounds could take months to heal. Sherlock estimated John at his fourth, possibly fifth month, meaning that he’d been back in London longer than he suspected. He’d have needed a sling for the first few months, and Sherlock hadn’t seen sign of one during his short visit to John’s dingy flat.

Above him, John puffed an amused breath. “Stop thinking, Sherlock.”

The teasing tone of it was reminiscent of an easier time between them, so much so that Sherlock could almost bring himself to pretend the past six years hadn’t occurred.

But that would never be the case.

He flopped over onto his back, eyes closed as he tried to shove away the rising pool of anger. As much as he wanted to be with John, to touch him and to be inside him, this one thing kept holding him back. Lost time, lost experiences. Things that could have been avoided. Sherlock resented John for leaving, and that was the truth of it.

He felt confused, trapped between two emotions that meshed as well as oil and water. How was it possible to love someone as much as he did John and yet feel so contemptuous toward them?

Beside him, John waited for Sherlock to pull himself together. His breath was shaky, amplified by the stillness of the room.

Sherlock was quite literally choking on his anger, unable to give voice to all the things he wanted to say. He realised that he was afraid. Afraid to wake up and find the spot next to him gone cold; that it had all been a dream and John was still somewhere in Afghanistan getting shot at, enjoying another lover, forgetting him. And even if it was real, John would hate Sherlock for being angry, for holding it against him that he wanted to be his own man.

How could he put into words the extent to which he missed John during his absence, the extent to which he would go just to have some reminder of the man he loved. No amount of sex workers or blond haired doppelgängers would have satisfied him. They were all just synthetic drugs substituting for the real thing.

And now that Sherlock had John back, he was unsure of what came next.

“I want to forgive you,” Sherlock whispered, hoping that John would understand. “I want you to stay, but I need you to understand…”

John shifted, jostling the bed as he slid to sit at the end of the bed. In his peripheral, Sherlock could see him run his hands through his hair. “Whatever you need, Sherlock.”

His voice was flat, a barely there reassurance. He was hurt.

Sherlock sat up, eyes on John’s hunched shoulders, the curve of his back. He enjoyed the play of shadows teasing views of his most intimate places. “John I… I’m not well versed in this, in any of this, but I’m  _ trying.” _

He felt raw. Stripped down and displayed in ways he’d resisted for years. He never understood emotions or what about love made people lose their minds,  _ themselves _ . Sherlock always thought himself to be untouchable; a bird jetting high over all of it, watching, observing. Now he was in the unfavourable position of having to confront sentiments he’d always been immune to.

John’s head turned, enough so that Sherlock could see the outline of his upturned nose, the jut of his chin. Affection swelled in his chest and drew him up. He was crawling across the bed on his knees before he knew it, aching to touch John.

Sherlock settled behind him and enfolded John is his arms, mindful of his fragility.

When John made no move to push him away, Sherlock reached forward to nuzzle into the warm, sweat-sticky slope between John’s neck and shoulder.

“I don’t want you to leave,” he mumbled, eyes squeezing shut as John’s hand reached back to burrow in his hair. “Never.”

John turned in his arms, all soft skin and warm breath. “I’m not,” he soothed. “I’m not going anywhere, Sherlock. I promise.”

Sherlock wrapped his arms around John’s waist, distantly worried that he could so easily feel John’s heart beating against his skin. His ribs were visible when he stretched his arms around Sherlock’s neck.

Sherlock nodded, just inhaling his scent.

Lips pressed into his hair, the kiss muted by his curls, but felt nonetheless.

“I love you, too, you know.”

Of course Sherlock knew, but by the way his heart leapt at the words it was as if he’d discovered it for the first time.

John sighed, swaying the curls beneath his mouth. “We’re both idiots.”

Sherlock chuckled, kissing John’s neck. “Yes, you are.”

“Oi!” John shoved at him, but Sherlock only gripped him tighter.

“Speak for yourself next time, then.”

 

-

 

Sherlock had always operated under the assumption that showers were meant for getting clean, but time after time, John put paid to that notion. 

There was no actual washing happening. Instead, John had him crowded against the wall and Sherlock was three fingers deep in John’s arse, groaning as a slick tongue trailed against the slit of his lips.

The water had gone lukewarm in the half hour it’d been since they stumbled into the shower. It hardly mattered, however. John’s hands on his body were hot enough.

John gasped as Sherlock’s fingers prodded his prostate and Sherlock chased the sound straight to the source, delving inside his wet-warm mouth with desperation.

His fingers inside John’s snug arse made his cock strain, wantonly curved and rigid against John’s slick belly. Sherlock massaged the gland, pulling John closer with the motion, unoccupied fingers digging into the soft skin of his buttocks.

“God, yes,” John trembled, hands quivering on Sherlock’s biceps. He reached down and grasped Sherlock’s erection, gave a few slow tugs. John snickered as Sherlock growled into the underside of his jaw, though nearly choked on his amusement when a clever mouth nipped it’s way up to his ear.

“Did you miss this?” Sherlock rumbled. “The feel of having me inside you? The blood pumping through your veins. Just you and me, and no one else?” He hissed out the last word, forcing hot breath into John’s ear, thrilling in the way his body shook as Sherlock teased him relentlessly. John’s hand on his cock had gone still the moment Sherlock began speaking, but just that amount of relief was pushing him to his threshold. “Did you miss me?”

John’s head fell forward into Sherlock’s chest, damp caramel strands tickling his neck. Sherlock reached down and clutched a thigh, pulling it around his waist.

“Open up for me,” he cajoled and placed a lingering kiss on John’s ear. “Can I, John? Can you let me in?”

Sherlock felt alive, whole for the first time in years. Of all the men he’d tasted, John was the sweetest. He’d missed the sound of his voice, that little whimper whenever Sherlock entered him. John loved his fingers, the length of them, all the places they could reach inside of him. Sherlock shamelessly played on this advantage, wringing as many wanton moans as he could from his lover’s throat.

“Keep your leg round my waist,” Sherlock ordered and let go. He smiled, pleased when John obeyed. With his free hand, he reached down to spread him further.

“Clever boy,” he crooned. John groaned, one hand clenching around Sherlock’s cock, while the other clutched his dripping curls in a tight fist. “I’ve missed you.”

He couldn’t resist the call of John’s lips, so he indulged. Sherlock dipped down and gave him a long, languid kiss. He felt giddy with anticipation and adrenaline. Words like dopamine and serotonin hovered up through the steam, a hazy mirage he knocked away as he shoved away from the wall. John stepped with him as Sherlock backed him into cold tile, meeting his enthusiastic lips with the same amount of vigour.

Sherlock’s fingers were beginning to cramp, his wrist twinging from the awkward position, but the way John was gasping against his mouth usurped any discomfort he may have felt. He pistoned his fingers in, nose dragging against John’s cheek as John turned away to draw in ragged breaths.

“I want to hear you,” Sherlock begged. He’d never been one to plead for anything in his life, but he needed to hear John. Needed to hear what he could reduce him to. “Please I need to—ungh!”

John’s hand began moving on him in earnest, a quick, ruthless pump that had him rutting into that hand with abandon. John’s cock against his thigh was rosy at the tip, pearling with a bead of pre-ejaculate. The sight of it drew a ragged moan up Sherlock’s tightening throat.

It was fast-paced and gritty. His fingers were going to hurt later, stuffed as they were inside John’s tensing body, but Sherlock couldn’t bring himself to care for all of that. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from John, the way a blush crawled up past his clavicles, tinged his straining neck a deep rosy colour.  

Sherlock was so close, years of longing crawling it’s way up his body, finally finding relief.

“Sherlock,” John whimpered and Sherlock echoed the sentiment, grinding his cock into his lover’s hand with rough strokes. John was riding his thigh, only to push back on his fingers with desperate urgency.

His orgasm hit harder than he’d expected it to, pulling words out of his mouth even he couldn’t understand. Sherlock was babbling, drowning in John’s hold for several long minutes until the intensity finally began to ebb. When he came to, John was holding him, and they’d sunken to the bottom of the bath.  

Cold water pelted them from above, cooling their burning skin.

John was flaccid, stomach speckled with semen, though most of it had washed away.

Sherlock slumped against him and laid his forehead on John’s collarbone.

“I love you,” he said, though it sounded more like an admittance than the first time he’d said it. The words carried more weight than ever. Without the fear of John leaving or his pressing anger, there was no catalyst, no reason to say it other than because he simply wanted to.

“I love you,” Sherlock repeated. And that was that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com)! Also, Crickette and I moderate a fic rec blog where we hunt down hidden gems and share them with our followers. You can find it [here](http://baker-street-irregulars-recs.tumblr.com)! 
> 
> Feedback is always encouraged. I would love to hear what you think of the new chapter! Until next time, my friends.


	7. The Devil's Bedroom Pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are finally "bonding" and Sherlock's shadowy past gets a little bit clearer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please excuse my shoddy graphics editing in this chapter. What I see on my laptop differs greatly from what I see on my phone.

Sherlock woke to John’s back, heated and perspiring against his chest. Wisps of dove grey light seeped through the curtains, casting the room in a wintry luminescence. Wrinkling his nose at the wet noise of their sweat-dampened skin peeling apart as he rolled onto his back, Sherlock stretched languidly against soft, body-warm sheets.

He sighed at the satisfying pop of joints in his back and shoulders and sank back into the mattress, head lolling to the side to take in his bedmate. John had been the last lover he’d had at Baker Street, in this bed, and at last he returned looking for all the world like he’d never left.

Sherlock would have wondered if it had all been some horrid nightmare if not for the burst of scar tissue on John’s shoulder, and the way the wings of his back jutted sharply from his paper-thin skin. Sherlock could just barely see the curving ladder of John’s spine. He’d kissed John there just before sleep claimed them both, watched the serpentine coil of it as John writhed beneath his lips. Sherlock had been mesmerized.

But in the light of day, it stretched his insides taut with anxiety. Now that John had agreed to stay, Sherlock would take care of him. He would pay Mrs Hudson to feed him up, three meals a day and more if that was what he wished, so long as Sherlock never had to see the sharp relief of John’s ribs and spine.

Not eating had always been a usual thing for Sherlock, but the John he remembered never went five hours without a bite. Wining and dining John had become a guilty pleasure of Sherlock’s, if only because he adored John’s little idiosyncrasies, even the ones he did unintentionally. The way John would tap his feet beneath the table when he found something pleasing on the menu, or the way he would wiggle in his seat after the initial taste. Now, John could hardly slow down long enough to savour his meals.

It made sense though. Upon his arrival back to London, John could hardly afford rent on his pension alone, so buying enough groceries to sustain a nutritious diet would have been impossible. Man cannot live on tinned beans alone, no matter John’s convictions that he, in fact, could. The sharp angles of his body said otherwise.

As John slept on, Sherlock, too wound up to fall back asleep, prepared for work. He made quick work of his shower, shaved, and brushed his teeth before returning to the bedroom for clothes.

John stirred, rolling over onto his back and rubbing circles over his closed eyes. When he heard Sherlock’s footsteps, he pushed himself up and back against the headboard, watching as Sherlock chose a herringbone tweed three-piece and a crisp white shirt. He forewent the tie; the blasted things were more suited to his brother’s taste.

Sherlock was well aware of John’s lazy stare as he dressed but avoided returning it. There was little else that could tear him apart the way those deceptively guileless blue eyes could, render him useless until he had every bit of John and John had every bit of him.

Although, he did get such pleasure out of hearing John’s breath grow quicker, catch, as Sherlock pulled his trousers up over the curve of his arse and let the band settle around his hips. The ensemble fit snugly but comfortably on his figure, Victor had made sure of that. As an artist, he understood the lines of Sherlock’s body better than any other tailor he’d ever commissioned, and as a friend, Victor had been witness a time or two to Sherlock’s vanity. Victor knew the fine cut of a cloth like Sherlock knew advanced chemistry, and so their working relationship ran like a well-oiled engine.

Which reminded him that he would need to set an appointment for John soon. Well, after Sherlock fed him up a bit.

“That colour,” John said suddenly, approvingly from the bed. “Looks good on you.”

He’d chosen dark navy, something that wouldn’t wash him out on what was looking to be dreary day. “Ah, thank you, John.” Finally, he allowed himself a peek and wished he hadn’t.

The bed seemed to swallow John almost entirely, a small figure against mounds of dark cotton. His hair stood up in disarray and pillow lines creased his right cheek. Dark eyes caught him up in a frightening grip, like being swept up in a storm and having nothing to hang onto, to keep him grounded. Naturally, Sherlock had no choice but to succumb to it. Desire settled warm and indulgent like a cat full with cream at the very bottom of his belly.

Cobalt eyes never left his own as Sherlock wound his way past scattered clothing and displaced shoes and John’s cane—which he retrieved and leaned against the side table.

A single kiss was all it took to unravel him.

He really should’ve known, Sherlock mused. He’d bent himself in half intending to mollify John’s anxiety, because as set as he was on hiding it, the way he clenched the sheets between his damp fist spoke volumes. He knew that one kiss, one touch, one anything with John was never enough to ease his appetite for the man.

One taste and every barrier was demolished under the wrecking ball of his affection for John, his craving.

John’s lips parted for him just as easily as his thighs when Sherlock’s hands sank beneath the sheets to feel his hardness, swallowing John's whimpers like a starving man. Sherlock thrust his tongue forward to meet John’s, wet breathy moans dragging up his throat only to spill into the slick cavern of John’s mouth. He was hard as marble beneath his trousers, pressing up against the seam as he palmed John’s cock until he was bucking into Sherlock’s hand with abandon.

He was drowning in him, and like a man who’d been submerged for too long, he resurfaced gasping for air. At some point he’d hunched over John, one hand beside his shoulder to steady himself as he stroked John’s cock with the other. He’d pressed John down into the mattress in a position which Sherlock was positive put pressure on his healing shoulder.

He didn’t allow John the chance to look away, relished the desperation and longing he saw in his glazed eyes as he reached for John’s hand and placed it on his swollen cock, warm and erect through layers of fabric.

John’s eyes flicked down, then up again, dark and heavy-lidded. “What do you want?” He asked, swallowing.

_Everything? Anything? To consume you, beat you, fuck you, dissect you, split you in half, savour you, tie you up and eat you out until nothing else matters but my tongue piercing your pretty, pink hole._

Instead, he said, “Make me come. I want to see my come on your lips, and then I want to kiss you until we both can’t breathe.”

John exhaled a shaky breath but wasted no time in getting Sherlock’s trousers undone and pulling his pants back until his cock sprang free.

With a self-effacing smirk, John took him in hand. “Talk to me?” He requested as he sank off the bed and to his knees between Sherlock’s legs without so much as a wince. His body was still bare from their nocturnal activities, nipples pink and pebbled in the cool climate of the bedroom. “Tell me what to do.”

They both knew that John knew what he wanted, what Sherlock liked. They had enough familiarity with each other’s bodies, even after six years, to know what made one another gasp and pant. John knew enough to drive him to the brink and back, keep him balancing on the edge of a steep drop and just when Sherlock thought he’d fall, would jerk him back to solid ground.

This was John wanting to hear his voice, to be praised and wanted; commanded, and Sherlock was obliged to oblige him.

“Rub your hands up my thighs,” Sherlock began, stomach clenching as John obeyed without hesitation. Devastation loomed closer with every drag nearer of those agile hands to his hardness. John’s tongue, pink and perfect and wet, swept across his lips as he leaned forward, breathing cool breath over the warm slick tip of his cock.

Sherlock’s stomach dropped low, squeezing at the sight of John’s nose dipping into the coarse, cognac curls at the base of his erection. “Look at me,” he demanded, voice stripped raw, ragged and sharp-edged. “Look at me when you put my cock in your mouth. I want to see your lips stretched around me.”

John gave in easily enough, dark eyes flicking up to match his stare as rose-stained lips descended upon him. It was sweet, blessed Heaven and slick, hot Hell; it was purgatory, the accursed place between salvation and damnation.

“Yes,” Sherlock hissed, head bending, body lurching forward as John’s throat constricted around his cock. “Just like that, yes, yessss.”

John pulled back, gasping, and Sherlock’s hand slid gently through his hair, coaxing him forward. John’s tongue teased around the rim, a translucent strand of precome clinging to the tip of it. Sherlock was caught up in the turbulent blue waters of John’s heated gaze, the lightning-like electricity of his warm mouth sliding down his cock.

His toes curled in his shoes, eyelashes fluttering of their own accord, fingers tightening as John moved down to suck Sherlock’s swollen bollocks into the hungry cavern just behind those gleaming lips. Sherlock groaned, bucking up into the sensation. His cock brushed against John’s cheek, leaving behind a shining trail of pre-ejaculate that sat prettily on his flushed skin.

“Oh, you clever boy,” he moaned as he gripped John’s face ever tighter against him. His tongue began laving the skin of Sherlock’s balls, wiggling down the seam and further back. “My clever, clever boy. Come back up so I can see your pretty lips.”

John moaned at the praise, allowing Sherlock to manhandle his head back to where he wanted it, a large hand fisted in his hair.

Sherlock could see his cock down the flat plain of his belly, painfully hard and ruddy. He wanted to feel it against his leg, wanted to see John getting himself off on his thousand pound trousers, because he deserved only the best to spill his seed upon. But a certain someone would kill him, and Sherlock would rather save that for another time. He’d see about getting John taken care of in a way just as satisfying.

Just as John was swallowing his cock again, the mobile on the side table gave two succinct rumbles, followed by three more sets in quick succession. But John’s mouth felt so wonderful on him, chaotic and soothing, scattering his thoughts and aligning them all to the same tune: _John, John, John._

_Zzzt. Zzzt._

_Zzzt. Zzzt._

John pulled away, not an easy task with Sherlock’s hand settled heavily on the back of his head. He glanced at the phone, then back to Sherlock. “Might be important,” he commented.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Yes, thank you for your input.” Then he attempted to steer John’s head back toward his suffering erection.

_Zzzt. Zzzt._

John hesitated, staying Sherlock’s insistent hand with two of his own against Sherlock’s thighs, resisting him.

_Zzzt. Zzzt._

“You should probably get that,” he said, finally, and reached for his cane where it leaned against the table. He struggled up from his knees with a grimace. “Seems urgent.”

Sherlock grabbed John’s wrist before he could get far and reeled him in to stand between his legs. His cock was still obscenely hard and John’s saliva hadn’t yet completely dried. “Whatever it is can wait,” he growled, annoyed at the intrusion. He’d had yet to be this intimate with John since his return. He’d missed it, and now someone had the gall to interrupt.

_Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt._

He scraped his hands through his hair, falling back against the sheets as John turned away to retrieve Sherlock’s phone.

“It’s Mycroft,” John informed him, squinting at the screen.

Oh, of course. Who else would have the pomposity to infringe on his time with John. “Tell him to fuck off.”

John snorted before the buzzing nuisance landed on his chest with a thud. “I’m not answering your phone, Sherlock. He’s your brother, you deal with him.”

At his tone, Sherlock raised his head as John limped out of the room, leaning heavily on the cane, and into the loo. He sounded upset; sharp, concise words and a bit bossy to boot. He had half a mind to drag John back and throw him over his knee. The thought certainly appealed to Sherlock’s flagging erection.

 _Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzt._  

 _“What?”_ Sherlock snapped into the phone. Mycroft always chose the worst of times to impose himself into Sherlock’s life. It was exhausting and he was still quite cross with the man for pulling that stunt with John’s parents. He and John had had plans that night, too.

“For all that you’re a supposed genius, I was beginning to suspect that you are inept at using your mobile. I see that my theory has been confirmed.”

“Piss off,” Sherlock hissed. “And don’t think that you won’t pay for your petty little move yesterday, _brother dear._ Keep your bloody, abominable arse out of our business, especially John’s!”

He could hear Mycroft preening through the phone when he responded. “Ah. Did our Dr Watson enjoy his welcome home gathering? I can see where he gets that fiery spirit. Mrs Watson is a formidable woman, isn’t she, Sherlock?”

He well remembered her threats in the kitchen the night before, the quick shift from warm and amiable to cold and calm, bright eyes glinting like steel as she observed him from across the kitchen. Formidable she was, and someone that Sherlock thought he could come to respect. He saw a lot of John in her, and for that alone, he was endeared to her even though the feeling was clearly not mutual.

“You’ve interrupted something important. Par for the course for you, so get to it, Mycroft. I haven’t all day.”

Mycroft hummed as if he had all the time in the world. “Yes, well, have you seen the news lately? Your _ex-lover_ ,” he spat the word like one would talk about stepping in excrement or coming upon a dead animal on the side road, “is causing problems. I suggest you bring yourself up to date with the goings-on of James Moriarty before you skip off into the sunset with your doctor.”

At the mention of Moriarty, a cold line drew itself down Sherlock’s spine, like a cube of ice sliding down his back. He sat up, putting himself away and righting himself as much as he could with one hand free.

Sherlock hung up without a word and stood, tucking the tail of his shirt back into his trousers. He smoothed the remaining wrinkles from his suit jacket before calling himself a cab. The sound of water rushing through creaky, old pipes suggested that John had fully checked out of whatever activities Sherlock had planned for them. It was all the same that he needed to be at the office and find out what Moriarty had gotten himself into this time.

He didn’t bother with knocking on the door, instead, letting himself into the loo, steam billowing out as he stepped in.

“Leaving, then?” John asked before Sherlock could speak. Sherlock could see his silhouette go still behind the frosted glass. John’s head cocked slightly, a bronze smudge.

“Yes,” Sherlock replied. “I’ve something I need to look into.” He stopped, hesitating with his heart in his throat. He didn’t know why he was nervous all of a sudden. Perhaps he was anxious to be leaving John at the flat alone. The thought of coming back to an empty home made his stomach churn. Feeling restless, Sherlock shifted from one foot to the other. “When I’ll return, we’ll continue where we were?”

It wasn’t meant to be a question, but he needed some sort of confirmation that John wouldn’t just run off in Sherlock’s absence. It was ridiculous, but the confirmation that he’d be there when Sherlock returned would be something of a comfort.

Slowly, the shower door slid aside and John’s spiky-haired head peeked out, a small, placatory smile turning up the corner or his lips. “C’mere?” He beckoned, slamming down the gauntlet in the form of those guileless cobalt blues.

“I can’t, John. I’ve got to go,” but even as Sherlock tried to refute John, his feet were moving toward him of their own accord.

John smirked, and the urge to kiss the smile off his face was nearly irresistible. When he was close enough, a dripping hand reached out and circled his nape, pulled him in. Lips, soft and wet, bestowed a lingering, closed-lipped kiss upon his own.

Sherlock’s stomach fluttered, like he was a teenager again, when he’d had his first kiss from a boy he’d fancied. Except there’d never been a boy or man he valued half as much as John. The odd flutter swelled until Sherlock wondered whether a kaleidoscope of butterflies had taken up residence inside of him.

“Go,” John said, pulling away and closing the glass door. “I’ll be here.”

Sherlock faltered. “Promise?”

Only a short moment of reluctance before, “Promise.”

 

-

 

 

Sherlock was furious.

Of course he should have expected the worst from Moriarty, but obviously the man’s madness had no bounds.

He knew well enough that there was bad blood between Sherlock and Magnussen. Sherlock shouldn’t have been surprised. Whenever Moriarty attacked, he always aimed low.

 

 

“What utter rubbish,” he growled, throwing the paper onto the table.

“Liam!” He shouted, not bothering with a phone call. The boy could hear him well enough. When his assistant finally deigned to poke his head into the office after a soft knock, Sherlock had to stop himself from biting his head off. “Get my brother on the line. He never rejects a call from the office.”

He picked up the London Daily paper he’d found sitting on his desk when he arrived, scowling as he read Moriarty’s simpering interview with BBC News.

When his desk phone rang, he snatched it up.

“Well, that was quite a bit later than I expected,” Mycroft crooned, the smarmy git. “Don’t tell me you had another visit with the doctor, and by visit I mean-”

Sherlock sneered, wishing that Mycroft could see him, because if looks could kill, his brother would be mince meat.

“I don’t have time for this, Mycroft. Tell me: You have your finger in every pie, so do your job and tell me what I’m up against.”

Mycroft sighed, but offered up his information rather more quickly than Sherlock expected. “I’m almost certain that finding a cure for polio is a front for something more sinister. In fact, CAM Industries came under fire from the MRC* for conducting stem cell research without the appropriate approval, and there was reason to believe Magnussen was illegally obtaining aborted foetuses for these purposes. It wouldn’t be a stretch to surmise that Moriarty was involved in some way. To what extent that may be, we haven’t a clue.”

Of course Moriarty wouldn’t be above involving himself in unethical medical practices. This was a man Sherlock had successfully proved in court to be buying non-MHRA* approved drugs wholesale off the black market and incorporating them into his products, while jacking up the costs. And yet, Moriarty had walked out of court after that nightmarish trial, uncuffed and smug.

Sherlock could feel his lips pressing together, teeth grinding as he wondered how much more he’d have to do to dismantle this spider’s web he’d somehow became tangled in. Jim Moriarty was his one true regret. There’d been a darkness in him that Sherlock, to his own detriment, had found attractive. Dark eyes and dark hair to match the roil of even darker emotions behind a gleaming gaze.

Now, the very thought of intimacy with Moriarty repulsed, even as his cleverness still begrudgingly awed him in turn.

“I’m warning you, Sherlock, not to do anything drastic. If not for the sake of your company, then for the sake of your doctor.” Mycroft spoke without a trace of scorn or mockery, solemn in his caution. For once, Sherlock agreed. “When and if he makes a move that directly affects you, then you will contact me immediately. Until then, my people will be keeping a weather eye on Moriarty.”

Mycroft rang off with a succinct goodbye, not waiting for Sherlock to answer, not that he would have. His eyes were on the horizon, over the black, glittering waters of the Thames and beyond, but his thoughts were not bound by London.

No, there was something more to Moriarty’s “humanitarian work” in Africa and South Asia, obviously. The transparency of Moriarty’s crimes were insulting, and Sherlock took it for the taunt that it was, the self-assurance that Jim Moriarty knew he could get away with anything and no one would lock him way for it. Moriarty was harvesting foetal-tissue overseas and selling it to Magnussen for his stem cell research, but proving it was only half the challenge.

Moriarty’s partnership with Magnussen put the power of the press behind him.

 

-

 

After snapping at Liam for the fifth time, Sherlock decided that he’d spend the rest of the day in his personal lab. As much as he had come to loathe the moniker his fellow classmates bestowed upon him in uni, Sherlock often longed for the time when he was considered “The Freak” and left to his own devices for hours, hunched over a microscope and jotting down unintelligible notes he’d probably never go over again. (His eidetic memory was as much a gift as it could be a curse.) Solitude was something he yearned for constantly and treasured when it came, but now, moments like that were few and far between.

The lab was tucked into the basement of his building, a tribute to the morgue at Bart’s where he’d began his fascination with chemistry. It reminded him of a good friend he once had, the only one apart from Victor.

Molly Hooper.

She’d been a hopelessly enamoured pathology major and he, an outsider that sought to understand human connections yet loathed them at the same time. He hadn’t treated her very kindly but the more time they spent there, toiling quietly side-by-side, hopelessly enslaved to their respective sciences, Sherlock began to value her presence. 

Eventually, Sherlock dropped out of Cambridge and began to see less and less of Molly as he melded into London’s nightlife, looking for that perfect high.

His teenage years weren’t all that happy following his multitude of reckless decisions, but Sherlock could never bring himself to delete any of it.

The lab was blessedly quiet and Sherlock slid his coat off with a sigh as he crossed the room. He hadn’t had the time to stop in, recently, not since John’s return and the parade of meetings Mycroft had taken to requesting his presence in.

Sherlock settled without much fuss to study a plate of bacteria cultures he’d placed in the incubator during his last visit. He scribbled absent-mindedly into his journal, thinking of a past life less savoury. Remembering Molly reminded him of a time when chemistry became less about his passion for knowledge and more about concocting the ideal drug, procuring only the best narcotics and inevitably, selling enough to amass a tiny fortune. The work gave him a purpose, stayed the fear of a brain gone sludgy and dark with intoxication.

However, Sherlock’s freedom didn’t last very long.

He was nineteen when Mycroft’s men raided his den and threw him into rehab and it was there, with nothing else to occupy his mind, that Sherlock decided to apply his chemistry. He returned to school and studied for his undergraduate and Doctor of Pharmacy degree dually, thanks to his meddling brother who insisted that “for a genius, certain exceptions will be made.” It shouldn’t have been possible, but Sherlock supposed he had Mycroft to credit for not having to spend the better half of his twenties in uni.

Sherlock’s pen hovered briefly over paper as an image of Mycroft came to him, unbidden, tall and chubby with a head full of hair he could only wish for now. He’d been young but the stress of keeping the secret of a drug-addled little brother from their parents showed in the newly-formed lines appearing across his forehead.

The air-con kicked on with a little rattle and Sherlock continued writing with a little shake of his head. It wasn’t enough to clear his thoughts, but at least he didn’t have to recall again the disappointment in Mycroft’s eyes.

n uni, Sherlock gained notoriety for his avant-garde experiments and his ability to solve complex equations without lifting a pen to paper. The professors doted on him, much to his despair and Mycroft’s pleasure, but it was his biochemistry instructor, Dr Hargrove, that nurtured Sherlock’s gift for pharmaceutical chemistry. Sherlock became fascinated with experimenting on living organisms, observing how the introduction of a new chemical could alter its processes, how _his_ compound could affect an organism on the subcellular level.

It was new and exciting, and as his venture into pharmacology continued, he found that he was never bored with it.

After he graduated, fortune swiftly came calling. Sherlock’s research had gained attention and shortly after, he was gracing the tables of managing directors for some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the UK and fielding job offers to join top research teams.

Mycroft thought him an idiot for turning down those offers, but Sherlock wanted the freedom to study whatever he wanted, to spend hours creating his own new medicines without the burden of answering to someone.

It paid off in the end, much to the surprise of Mycroft and their parents.

And there he was, living comfortably in his thirty-second year, a self-made man… and just finding out what it meant to love someone other than himself for the first time in his life.

John…

Sherlock sat his pen on the table and closed the journal, the analysis only partly complete. He ran his hands through his hair and stretched before checking the time. He’d only been there about an hour and already he was thinking of getting home to John.

 _'What a peculiar thing Love is,’_ Sherlock mused. It was an uncomfortable state of being for Sherlock. It made his chest hurt constantly and any length of separation from John made him eager to get back.

At the moment, there was nothing that could be done for it except to return to Baker Street where John was waiting for him.

 

-

 

Sherlock arrived home late in the day with takeaway and a burgeoning migraine. A giggle from inside froze Sherlock on the landing and he waited with an ear perked toward the door.

“Oh, I think I hear him now.” Mrs Hudson. Sherlock pretended not to be breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t that woman John used to hang around, Sarah. Why his thoughts immediately turned to her was a mystery. He was certain if John hadn’t spoken to his parents in six years, then Sarah was most likely not an exception to his silence. “Never could get that boy to stop slamming doors. Going to tear it right off the hinges, he is.”

Sherlock opened the door his gaze drawn like a magnet to where John sat at the desk, laptop open and a serene smile gracing his lips as Mrs Hudson sat next to him with a cup of tea cradled in her frail hands.

“Oh, Sherlock! Don’t you look dashing in that suit,” she said, standing. “That Mr Trevor can work magic with a needle and thread, isn’t that right, John?”

John smirked over at him, rising to help Mrs Hudson clear the remains of their impromptu tea party. “Thanks for the tea, Mrs H,” he replied, in lieu of an affirmation. “Sure you don’t need help getting downstairs?”

Mrs Hudson squeezed John’s arm affectionately. “Oh no, dear. I should be fine on my own. Between bridge with the ladies and my afternoon lunch with that sweet man, Mr Chatterjee, I finally got around to getting a refill on my herbal soothers.” She patted her hip. “Works like a charm.”

Sherlock sat the food on the desk, raising a brow at Mrs Hudson as he removed his suit jacket and hung it on the back of the chair across from John’s. “Herbal soothers aren’t exactly what I was smelling this morning when I left. You might crack a window next time.”

Sherlock well remembered that familiar scent during his short stint at Cambridge. He and Victor would indulge occasionally, smoke a bit of marijuana, but by the number of times Sherlock would smell it from 221A, Mrs Hudson had no qualms with overindulging.

Mrs Hudson feigned outrage, giving Sherlock a little slap on the arm. “I’ll have you know a little marijuana would clear that little temper you have right up, young man.”

John snickered, already retreating to the kitchen for plates and cutlery.

“Well,” Mrs Hudson chirped, “I best be going. I just came up to tell our Captain Watson how lovely it is to have him back in Baker Street, right Sherlock?”

Sherlock caught John’s eyes, waiting until he had his full attention to answer. “Yes, he belongs here.”

And it was true enough. Even now, John looked so much the same, yet immeasurably changed in a multitude of ways. He still brought sunshine to 221B. There were moments when Sherlock forgot he’d ever left, but then he would see those blue eyes turn inward and hollow and he remembered the six empty years yawning between them.

Mrs Hudson left them both with kisses on their cheeks and a warm good night.

Dinner was a quiet affair, but not an uncomfortable one. It was easy, the way things should be between them. He didn’t bother trying to hide the fact that he was monitoring John’s food intake. His plate was nearly empty when he finally pushed away from the table, and that was good enough for Sherlock. He ate about half of his own serving and together, they cleaned up and put the rest into the fridge.

John was the one to take his hand and lead him up the stairs, heart hammering the closer they got to the door that would take them into a completely different territory.

The door was still unlocked from last night, before John’s parents announced their arrival on his doorstep with frantic knuckles.

Some things were different. The room hadn’t been used since he and John had last been in it, but he hadn’t been able to bear looking at it and seeing John’s signature written upon it all.

The canopy was gone, leaving a bare bed with eggshell sheets that bore the signs of a recent wash and press, and a few fluffy pillows. Sherlock didn’t bother telling Mrs Hudson not to come up there, anymore. The woman did what she wanted, and she couldn’t stand a dusty room, even if she wasn’t sleeping in it. The bed was the same, however, large and stately, enough to fit five adult men. Sherlock could never bring himself to get rid of it.

Sherlock closed the door behind them, and as the lock clicked into place, so did the gravity of the moment.  

Neither of them bothered with placations. There’d been enough questions in their eyes, too many are-you-okays to which the answer was always ‘I’m fine.’ Neither of them were fine, but this would help. Sherlock needed something from John and John needed something from him. It was perfectly symbiotic.

Sherlock circled him, a slow, calculated stalk to ease them both into the moment. “Undress for me,” he began. “Take your time.”

He could see John’s shoulder already relaxing as he handed over the reigns of his control to Sherlock.

They had all night and Sherlock would make sure that it lasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *MHRA is the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. According to research, they are the equivalent to the US FDA. If this is wrong, please feel free to correct me. 
> 
> *MRC is the Medical Research Council. They are over scientific research in the UK. 
> 
> These definitions are all simplified, so as to avoid wrong information. If you want to know more about the MHRA and the MRC, I recommend a quick Google search. 
> 
> Come talk to me on [tumblr](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com)! I love meeting new people and I promise a drama-free, hate-free fandom experience. 
> 
> I would love to hear back from all of you and constructive criticism is always welcome!


	8. The Devil's Bedroom Pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock reinforces the rules. Well, at least that was the plan.

_ Sherlock circled him, a slow, calculated stalk to ease them both into the moment. “Undress for me,” he began. “Take your time.” _ __  
__  
_ He could see John’s shoulder already relaxing as he handed over the reigns of his control to Sherlock. _ __  
_  
_ __ They had all night and Sherlock would make sure that it lasted.

 

Sherlock watched him undress with a curious sense of urgency budding in his chest, his heart fluttering like the wings of a moth. As John revealed inch after inch of tawny skin, Sherlock’s thoughts began to unravel. It was something about 221C, something about knowing what was to come that made him anxious and anticipatory. Nevermind that it wasn’t the first time Sherlock had seen John naked since they’d reunited, it felt entirely different.

Outside of 221C, John could have just as much control in their bedroom activities as Sherlock, if he so wished. But there in that room, Sherlock’s command was law. John submitting to him again after all the time that had passed, baring his body and offering it up like the most divine of sacrifices… it derailed his thoughts.

When the last of John’s clothes hit the floor, that cobalt gaze, dark and bottomless, snapped up to meet his own, awaiting instructions. He stood differently now, straighter, chest puffed out and confident despite the ravages of war that played out in new scars and the wound spidering across the back of his shoulder. It was a stark contrast to the John he’d been greeted with only a couple of days ago, hunched and defeated. Further proof that this was as much John’s salvation as it was Sherlock’s.

Sherlock stood before him, breathless with wonder. John had been through hell and back, but even then, he was willing to show Sherlock his vulnerability. And behind all it, there was that flicker of defiance, there to light the flame of Sherlock’s passion.

He swallowed, clearing his throat before he began. “Do you remember, John, our little playtime with rope? The very first time?” It was rhetorical, no response required and John didn’t offer an answer, instead dropping his eyes down then lifting them up again, coy and burning with lust at the memory. “It was my intention to do that again…”

Sherlock ran a finger from the base of John’s sternum down, following the line of his stomach, stopping just over his navel.

“I’m curious to see what your changed body will look like in my ropes, all that newly tanned skin on display.” Sherlock shrugged. “Think about it quite a lot, actually.”

Sherlock stared down at his pale hand, flattened over burnished, golden skin, the tip of his fingers tingling where they connected to John. “But perhaps it would be better if we rehashed some old rules.”

Sherlock dropped his hand and stepped away, walking toward the cupboard where he kept his toys. “I’m sure you had your superiors during your stint in the army, people whose orders you followed to the letter with, perhaps, the risk of punishment if you failed to comply.”

Sherlock picked up a black, silicone vibrating cock-ring that would do for this occasion. He also opted for the butt plug with a low, medium, and high setting he could control with the small remote he slipped smoothly into his pocket. Lastly, he retrieved a tube of lube and two coiled lengths of cotton rope before shutting the doors to the cupboard and turning back to John, who was surveying his choices with a mix of dread and excitement.

He tossed the objects on the bed and threw a wry grin toward John, enjoying the way his obvious uncertainty warred with pride. Sherlock unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and began rolling one, and then the other to just under his elbow with calm focus.

“Then, you became  _ Captain  _ Watson.” Sherlock chuckled. “Issuing orders, dressing down your men when they needed to be put in place. I’m sure you got quite used to that.”

Sherlock took his time crossing the room as he spoke, and picked up the padded leather chair in the corner of the room, the one he distinctly remembered sitting in as he took John over his knees for the first time. He sat it in the middle of the room, biting down on his smile as John swallowed but kept his gaze steady.

“I can hear it in how you speak sometimes, you know. That need to command, to take charge.”

Sherlock stepped into John’s space until John was forced to tilt his head back in order to keep their eyes locked. Sherlock feigned compassion as he pinched John’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, eyes falling to John’s soft, thin lips. “The hierarchy here is a bit different than what you’ve gotten used to, isn’t it? Well, let’s work on that then, shall we?”

Sherlock spun toward the chair and walked around it until he was standing behind it. “Your safeword, do you remember it?”

John nodded, still not moving from where Sherlock left him standing. His small frame was perfectly straight, the line of his back tense as he waited for Sherlock’s orders. His cock stood erect in a thicket of honeyed curls.

“Sapphire,” John answered, the first time he’d spoken since entering the room. His voice was surprisingly steady and an octave lower than usual.

“Very good, John,” Sherlock praised.

With a hand on the small of John’s back, Sherlock led him to the side of the chair. “Kneel here, with your stomach and chest on the chair. There shouldn’t be much pressure on your knees or shoulders. You’ll tell me the minute you begin feeling pain, do you understand, John?”

John did as asked, draping himself over the seat, which left his arms and legs free, and his side resting against the padded back of the chair.

“Any pain in your leg or shoulder?” Sherlock enquired, to which John responded in the negative. “Brilliant.”

From the bed, Sherlock retrieved the cotton ropes and knelt in front of John’s draped figure. “I’m going to tie your wrists together, and your biceps and thighs to the chair legs. I’ll leave your ankles free but it’s your responsibility to leave them parted, understood?”

John nodded and held his hands out. Sherlock wrapped them gently with the first coil of rope, until the knuckles of his fists were pressed snug together. Sherlock moved onto John’s biceps, wrapping the rope round the arm and the chair a few times until he could hardly move it.

Usually, Sherlock would coil the rope over his back and bind his middle to the chair, but his instincts told him that entrapping John completely in such a way would be unwelcome. Instead, he passed the rope under the chair and repeated the same motions with the other arm before running it underneath to where John’s thighs rested against the legs.

When he was finished, John was bound to the chair with just enough wriggle room for Sherlock to play with him. It was an appealing position; John’s arse was on display, legs spread, and between them his cock and balls heavy and swollen.

Sherlock smoothed a hand down his flank, breath hitching at a flex of muscles beneath velvety, hairless skin. The crest of his hipbone cut a sharp angle against Sherlock's palm. He shuddered as John so subtly arched into the touch. He felt electrified, having John here at his mercy like this, so open for him.

He rose and returned to the bed where the last of his supplies lay, and picked them up, allowing the cock-ring to slide down his finger. Sherlock crouched beside John and leaned forward to drift his lips across the back of his naked shoulder, the smell of old books and black tea soothing something primal inside of him. John was a living ode to Baker Street and their place within it.

His free hand skated down John’s back and rested briefly over the swell of John’s buttocks before sliding down to the back of his thighs.

Sherlock shifted, stiffening further in his trousers at the feel of soft, lush skin. John’s breaths were uneven now, skittering past his lips as Sherlock moved his hand up the inside of his thigh and over his cock. He stroked him lightly until John was easing his hips into the rhythm of Sherlock’s slow pumps.

Sherlock pulled away and grabbed the lube, squirting some onto his hand before resuming his strokes with a tighter grasp. John moaned, head turned to watch, but all he would be able to see was Sherlock and his moving shoulder. Without a break in his rhythm, Sherlock addressed John and brought the cock-ring to eye level for him to see.

“You remember this, yes? Only, this one vibrates,” Sherlock said, then deftly replaced his hand with the ring around John's girth.

John whimpered just the tiniest bit, but it was enough to send a jolt of thrill straight down to Sherlock’s groin.

“I love seeing you this way,” Sherlock whispered, unable to resist John when he was like this. He allowed himself a moment, just this once, to take John by the jaw and direct those lips to his own. They were soft and wet, pliant and warm. John had already opened his mouth to him, so Sherlock entered, sucking John’s tongue with fervour, bit his lip and swallowed his gasps.

He tore himself away, breaths quick and heavy. He felt intoxicated, drunk with pleasure and the flood of endorphins cancelling out everything but his ruthless desire. Sherlock wanted so badly to fuck him, but the game was far from over. If he could just stay on track, then he could reap the rewards in the end.

John was bewitching, always bewitching him and he didn’t even know it.

Sherlock blinked rapidly, pulling himself together, and went for the last item.

He repositioned himself behind John, petting a hand down his flank just to feel John’s response to his touch. He wasn’t disappointed.

John arched to meet him, straining against the ties briefly before Sherlock settled a staying hand on his back. “Down, John,” Sherlock reprimanded. “You know better.”

He was stunning like this, prepossessing in his submissiveness and Sherlock was suddenly nervous to bugger it all up. He spent the years between John’s absence wading in drugs and worshipping little false gods with blond hair and blue eyes, such ordinary features that it should have been easy to find another. Now, he was kneeling behind the only divine being he’d ever put his faith in and could hardly bring himself to move.

Sherlock looked up to find John observing him with an astute gaze, dark eyes shimmering like liquid beneath the dim luminescence casting the room in a hazy ambience. He didn’t ask questions, and as soon as their eyes met, he dropped his own and closed them as his head lowered to rest on his crossed arms. 

Sherlock leaned forward and pressed his cheek against the soft, vulnerable skin over John’s sacrum. His lips skated across the plush flesh of John’s arse cheek as he spoke.

“The amount of times I’ve contemplated this very scenario during your absence would astound you. I thought about you constantly, about what I would do if I ever had you here again; in my bed, in my home, in my possession. Yet, now that I do, I find myself in the precarious position of deciding whether I should eschew restraint and take you like this, or make you wait.”

Sherlock paused, sure that he was giving away too much, but couldn’t force his mouth to stop moving.

“This position epitomizes everything I was when you left,” Sherlock murmured, bitterness a sour draught on the tongue. “Hands tied, vulnerable, empty—which you won’t be for long, John, but you get the point.”

On the one hand, Sherlock hated revealing just how much John’s absence had affected him, but on the other, he didn’t truly think that John understood how important he’d become to someone who had never put much stock into interpersonal relationships.

Sex hadn’t been much more than something to occupy his mind, something to keep him away from more disreputable vices; merely an exchange of power and bodily fluids. Sex had never gone hand-in-hand with love and emotions, and he had years of experience to prove that. Prior to John, he never had issues with divorcing sentiment and carnal knowledge.

And then there was John, with his kind eyes, tolerating all of Sherlock’s eccentricities that would send any sane individual scarpering. Praising him. Submitting to him. Sherlock had been thoroughly fascinated and constantly surprised with every new interaction.

Then, he’d taken all of that away and left Sherlock scrambling to fill in a gap that should never have formed in the first place. He’d been whole before John. He hadn’t needed John barging in and deconstructing years of work to be what everyone already thought him to be: A machine, a heartless vessel.

Sherlock pulled away completely and sat back on his heels. “This is the only time I’ll ask, but I have to hear it from you or else I’ll call this all off.”

He watched as John turned his head to listen, only the side of his face and the narrowed corner of his eye visible from Sherlock’s vantage point.

“Is this what you want?” Sherlock asked. “Because after this, there will be no disappearing. I want everything from you, John, and not just your reluctant cooperation.”

_ Do you need me as much as I need you? _

He waited with bated breath, watched as worry carved tension in John's jaw, his tongue flicker over his lips before he answered.

“Of course, Sherlock,” John whispered. “Yes, Sherlock, I—yes. Please.”

Please. The one word encompassed everything Sherlock couldn’t suss out before, couldn’t figure behind the indifference John had acquired and honed during his time away. Sherlock would strip that away, help John to see that he wouldn’t tolerate apathy between them, nor secrets, or anything that would hinder their progress.

Sherlock could hear it as clearly now as he could his own heartbeat, in that moment. John wanted to be there just as much as Sherlock wanted him to be, and he was ready.

And Sherlock wouldn’t fail him.

He closed his eyes and breathed out, and when they opened, he knew what he had to do.

With one hand, Sherlock reached over John’s back and pressed John’s head down to rest on his arms, while the other slithered down between the crack of his buttocks to reveal his pink, puckered entrance. Sherlock massaged his perineum with the pad of his thumb, just enough to relax John’s rigid back until John was melting against the seat of the chair. Then Sherlock leaned forward to pressed the flat of his tongue there.

John’s back curved over leather, the material groaning as he shifted against it. He gasped, pushing back into Sherlock’s mouth as much as he could with his thighs bound to the chair legs.

Sherlock drew back to flick his tongue over John’s arsehole before he delved back in to drop a suckling kiss onto it. He was desperate to hear his sounds, collecting whimpers to hoard away in his mind palace when he couldn’t have the real thing.

He retreated briefly to re-apply more lubricant to his fingers. The subtle curve of John’s back was fetching, prompting Sherlock to lay himself flush against it, chest resting against John’s shoulder blades.

“You’re being so good for me, John,” Sherlock praised, one rebel finger eagerly dipping into his submissive’s wet hole.

He nearly keened at the feel of John’s greedy arse swallowing him and John’s tortured moan, the sweetest sound he hadn’t heard for too long. The noise rattled around in his mind like an echo chamber, fueling his hunger.

“Did you do it on purpose, John? Setting your sweet little arse on me, making it so I can’t think about anything else but you?”

John was grinding on his finger, pushing up against Sherlock’s engorged cock with every needy thrust.

Sherlock huffed an explosive breath against John’s nape, circling John’s neck with his arm as he added another finger. He used his forearm to tilt that blond head back and bury his nose in it, the very scent of him making Sherlock’s stomach tighten with want. His face and neck grew hot, head pounding in time with the rush of blood beneath his skin. 

John issued a shaky breath as Sherlock kissed a slow path across the back of his head while his fingers crooked to stimulate John’s prostate.

He knew he’d found it when John shivered violently against him, a shuddering exhale tearing from his throat.

“Mm,” Sherlock moaned, catching the soft flesh of John’s lobe between his teeth and balancing it on his tongue. “It is taking every _ounce_ of my will not to lose the restraints and spread your legs as far as they’ll go, force your belly to the floor and fuck you until your insides are plastered with my come.”

He was rutting against John’s arse like some feral dog, losing himself in the sensation of John’s soft, naked body pressed against his clothed one. Sherlock’s head spun, actions out of his control as he released his pent up aggression and years worth of desire slammed out through his hips and fingers and tongue. John's oesophagus was working against his forearm, vibrating with every ragged moan wheezing through his open mouth.

Sherlock was up to three fingers now, thumb rubbing against John’s coccyx as Sherlock massaged his prostate. His erection pressed just beneath, the front of his trousers wet from his own saliva on John’s arse. He wanted to press up and get inside of John, do exactly as he’d described and forget all about restraint.

The back of John’s thigh quivered against the front of Sherlock’s, flushed red beneath the cotton rope. He was going to come soon if Sherlock didn’t pull himself together, cock-ring or not.

Sherlock slowed his thrust and peeled away, the front of his shirt damp from John’s sweat. The room already held the sharp, briny scent of their excitement, their own little nest away from everything else. It was so similar to all those years ago, like no time had passed at all.

Sherlock retracted his fingers, much to John’s despair. His hips bucked a few times, looking to be filled again, wanton and intemperate.

It reminded Sherlock that he had a purpose for this game.

Sherlock retrieved the plug and lathered it with lubricant before placing it at John’s entrance, waiting until he was completely still, then pushed it inside in one slow slide. After inserting the plug until only the curved, horizontal handle protruded, Sherlock sat back to survey his submissive.

Then he remembered what he’d been carrying up the stairs before they were interrupted by John's parents. The riding crop he’d bought just for John.

Sherlock sucked in a breath and stood.

“A moment John,” he stated, then swept out of the room and down the stairs.

It was right where he left it, pushed into the very back of his sock drawer, an absurd thought seeing as no one but Sherlock knew of its existence. He placed the box on the bed and opened it, running a hand down the smooth handle of the riding crop before taking it out.

It was familiar in his grip, not so much of a change from his old one. He held it with just as much assurance that it would carry out his will properly as the first had done.

And just to be certain, Sherlock peeked beneath the false bottom of the box, and sure enough, there lay the small case with the platinum bracelet. That was for another day.

Sherlock put everything to rights and returned the mostly empty box back to the sock drawer, making sure it was hidden before he closed the drawer and left the room.

John was right where he left him, back a lovely shade of pale pink, like an orchid in bloom, scaling up his neck to where his face was undoubtedly flaming. His clever boy was quick to spot the difference, murky eyes fastening on the crop held loosely in Sherlock's hand.

“Stunning,” Sherlock murmured to himself, sliding his hand into his pocket where the remote lay in wait. For a moment, he simply watched John’s ribcage expand with each breath. It was proof enough that this wasn’t all in Sherlock’s mind, that John was real and tangible; not just a vivid dream that would disintegrate the moment Sherlock decided to believe it.

With a deep breath, Sherlock came to stand before John, his cock still painfully hard.

“You’ve done quite well, so far, John,” Sherlock commented, reaching down briefly to run a hand through John’s sweat-dampened hair before straightening up. “Better than I expected after this long. I want to see how many of my rules you remember and how well you can take orders now that you’ve had a taste of authority.”

Sherlock tilted his head and strolled around John’s restrained figure until he was back where he started. “The better you do, the greater—the more pleasurable—your orgasm will be. Disobey, and punishment with be dealt swiftly. You know my methods, John. They haven’t changed.”

Sherlock crouched, bringing himself eye-to-eye with John, and flashed a smiled. “Well, then. Let's begin.”

Standing, he had full access to John, the unblemished skin of his back, save for the exit wound, arse on display for Sherlock's pleasure. He was completely vulnerable like this, a slave to Sherlock's whims. Power was the most potent drug and Sherlock was higher than he could remember being in a long time.

He traced the dip of John's spine, giving the riding crop its first taste of flesh. “What is rule number one, John? Do you recall?”

Sherlock would be surprised if he didn't. It had been a memorable occasion, followed by some of the best sex either of them had ever had.

John's breath was tremulous, the loudest sound in the room besides the shush of leather mapping out the expanse of his back. They’d only gotten as far as rule five before Sherlock dragged John up to sit on his cock.

John whimpered as the tip of the crop caressed the curve of his arse before dipping between his cheeks. “Do not— _ fuck, _ ” He broke off as Sherlock prodded the handle of the plug with the head of the riding crop. “Don't disobey you.”

Sherlock hummed, adjusting his erection in his trousers as he watched John strain against his bonds, try to spread his legs wider, arch his back more.

“Very good, John, remembering after all this time,” Sherlock said, couldn't quite keep the condescending bite out of it, the bitterness, but he did his best. “I think you deserve a reward.”

Sherlock knelt behind him, one hand already on the remote in his pocket as he reached forward to stroke John's cock. He pressed the button on the cock-ring to activate the vibrator and used the remote to power on the plug in John's arse. His reaction was violent as the plug stimulated his prostate. Sherlock pulled his cock with slow, firm strokes and leaned forward to flick his tongue over John's balls.

His lightly furred bollocks tickled Sherlock's tongue as he sucked one and then the other into his mouth, groaning at the notes of leather, the sharp, tart scent of sweat accumulated in closed spaces. He could still smell the synthetic flowery fragrance of John's laundry detergent, and beneath that, the smell of  _ John _ . It was unexplainable, indescribable, a mesh of all the things Sherlock adored about him and base notes of darker, riper smells.

John was pushing back against him, body shaking as Sherlock milked him with no intentions of letting him come anytime soon. He pulled away with a slurp, letting John's balls slide from between his lips and his hands fall away after pressing the button to stop the cock-ring. He lowered the setting for the plug to a lower level but left it on.

Sherlock rose on trembling legs and swiped the back of his hand across his damp lips and cheeks, his entire body vibrating and in tune with every sound that left John's lips. He'd never felt so bowled over, so undone even as his cock remained untouched. He unbuttoned his trousers, allowing himself a little more room to breathe.

John was a sobbing wreck, back heaving as he strained back against nothing.

“Look at you, so needy,” Sherlock tutted, standing before John, his crotch at eye-level. He invaded his space, grabbing the back of John's head and leading his reddened face to Sherlock's bulging trousers. “You have no idea what it's taking not to shove my dick inside of your pretty pink mouth.”

He was losing control, bowing to his urges and John was right there absolutely open to him.

Try as he might to keep a firm grip on himself, Sherlock was fighting an uphill battle and losing.

Sherlock bit his lip, using the pain to stay grounded. It helped a bit, enough for him to pace back a step or two and gain some distance between himself and his submissive.

“Rule number two. What is it?” Sherlock croaked, still fighting to gain the upper hand on his body.

John opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, swallowed. Sherlock smiled.

“Don't speak unless you give me permission.”

“Ah, and I can't quite recall, did I give you permission to speak?” He waited, and finally, John shook his head. “No. Non-verbal communication  _ is  _ something you learn in the military, is it not?”

A nod.

“Perfect. This might sting a bit.” Sherlock brought the crop down on John’s arse with just enough force for the pain to flare, but not enough to linger. John hissed in a breath, blinking hard once as he tried not to make a sound. A patch of red was already blooming on his left cheek where the blow had landed.

Sherlock knelt beside John and placed the crop on the floor before running a soothing hand over the mark. With his other, he cradled John’s cheek in his palm. “That wasn’t quite fair, was it?” He asked. “I’m sorry, John. You’ve been a good boy tonight, doing everything I’ve asked. You didn’t deserve that.”

Sherlock leaned forward and traced the seam of those worried lips with his tongue. John opened his mouth without hesitation and met him with a greedy kiss, less lips than tongue and wet warmth. Sherlock growled against his mouth and reached below the chair to tug on John’s cock. John thrust back, fucking into Sherlock’s hand without a care to how desperate and slutty he looked, his arse bouncing as his hips ground up and down to meet Sherlock’s fist.

“You want to be fucked so badly, don’t you?” Sherlock pulled away to snarl. John followed him, his mouth open and damp and smeared on Sherlock’s chin. “Look at you, rutting against me like a little beast. You  _ want  _ to drive me insane.”

Sherlock’s groped for the remote in his pocket and turned it to the highest setting, his heart hammering as John’s body convulsed against him. He made the most beautiful sounds and Sherlock kissed him, pulling the noises straight from John’s throat and into his mouth.

His head felt light, airy, ascending somewhere unreachable as rationality stepped outside of his grasp. His chest was tight, stomach clenched, cock unbearably confined. Well, at least one of those could be fixed.

Sherlock didn't bother tearing his lips away, merely reached down to free himself and palm his cock as John’s tongue tangled around his, slick and dirty.

_ “John!”  _ Sherlock hissed.

John’s groans were guttural now, edged with hysteria and a deep-felt longing that resonated with Sherlock in ways he didn’t have the imagination to conjure up, the words to describe.

“Three,” he wheezed, desperate. “Speak, John. Tell me, what’s the third rule.” He had to get through this, but John was shaking his head.

“I dunno, Sherlock.  _ Jeeeesus _ , I—I can’t,” he gasped, eyes fluttering shut. Sherlock slowed his strokes, keeping them in time with his own. “Can’t th-think.”

The lubricant was in his hands before Sherlock could think, fingers slick and pulling out the plug in John's arse with one careless tug, still buzzing as it tumbled to the floor. He sunk two fingers inside of him and  _ yes _ ,  _ yesyesyes _ , John was so warm there, pushing back just to suck him in.

Sherlock moved to kneel behind John, almost regretting it as John let out a pitiful whimper at the loss of Sherlock's mouth. He slicked himself up and removed his fingers, throat closing at the delectable sight of John's hole, dilated and glistening with lubricant.

Sherlock positioned his dick and sank inside, eyes squeezing shut as he struggled to regain control of his transport. It wouldn't do for John to see just how much power he held over Sherlock, but he guessed that ship has sailed long ago.

There was absolutely nothing he wouldn't do for John in that moment. Or any other. Sherlock reached around and took John's cock in his hand, mapping out the smooth, hard ridges of it.

“Three, John. Tell me rule three and I'll give you what you want.”

John's head lolled against his forearms, nearly too far gone to answer.

“John,” Sherlock implored. This was the most important rule. Sherlock had to know that he remembered it.

Finally, John took mercy on them both.

“No one,” John began, voice thin and shaky. “ _ Shit _ . Only—only you can touch me like this.”

Relief rushed through him, pure and sweet and he gladly welcomed it, for once not caring about John’s time away or who might have had him. He was Sherlock’s and he was  _ there _ with him in _his_ arms. Everything—everyone—else could wait.

Sherlock moved, fingers pressing bloodless dents into John’s hips as he fucked him, surrounded by tight heat. He doubled over John’s back, knees coming up off the floor until Sherlock was leaning forward on his toes,  _ shovingshovingshoving _ his cock inside of him.

John was so close, Sherlock could feel his cock getting harder in his hand with every slap of Sherlock’s balls to his arse, every twist of his fingers, every nudge to his prostate. Nothing was left untouched, nothing left sacred.

John’s nape was blushing and vulnerable, so Sherlock placed his lips there and sucked, stomach quivering at his submissive’s luxurious moan. He snapped his hips forward, driving into John with the fervency of one deprived of touch for far too long. John met him for each thrust, not shying away from the hard grind of Sherlock’s cock ramming his prostate ruthlessly.

Sherlock made the mistake of looking down, and  _ god,  _ John’s red little hole was swallowing him up. “John,” he breathed. “ _ Uh! _ ”

He draped himself across John’s back and threaded a hand beneath John’s body, reaching up until he had the base of John’s throat sitting in his palm. He used the leverage to pull him up as much as possible with the restraints and fucked him, mind disconnected from his mouth as he babbled praise in John’s ear.

“You’re so good like this, John, do you know how pretty you look with my ropes around your thighs, spreading you open?” He panted. “Your greedy, pink little hole gaping. I want to finish inside of you, watch my come dripping down your legs when you stand up.”

John’s held lolled against his shoulder, mouth wide open, so Sherlock made good use of it. John clamped his lips over Sherlock’s fingers readily, sucking them in until the tips nearly touched the back of his throat. He gagged messily, saliva running down his chin as Sherlock hooked two fingers on the back of his tongue.

“ _ Mmmm _ ,” John groaned around Sherlock’s fingers.

Sherlock could feel him getting tighter, clamping down around him.

John’s sudden orgasm took them both by surprise as he tensed up, spilling warmth over Sherlock’s fingers and squeezing down on his dick until Sherlock’s eyes rolled back, mouth slack.

John grunted, open-mouthed, around his fingers, a sobbing gurgling mess, the dirtiest thing Sherlock may have possibly been privy to in all of his sexual encounters.

It was a religious event, this orgasm, Sherlock decided. He would never again be closer to any deity than he was at that moment. His climax, when it took him, was of the heart skipping, stomach spasming, toe curling, eye twitching, nonsense babbling sort and by whatever divine intervention, he experienced every single one of them.

Briefly he caught himself thinking,  _ ‘If there is a higher power, it’s quite possible I just defiled him.’ _

For a moment, he just breathed, slumped over John’s panting back, until, “Er, Sherlock, you’ve got to get off.”

He pretended not to hear, eyes closed and bones useless. He was still catching his breath.

“Sherlock,” John prodded with a little kick to his calf. “My shoulder.”

Huffing, Sherlock sat up and began working on John’s ties, too sated to complain and maybe just a bit eager to hold John, although he would never say aloud.

When John was free, Sherlock pulled him over, letting John straddle his lap and lay his head in the crook of Sherlock’s neck and shoulder. He wrapped his arms around John’s waist and held him close, the rightness of it an alien feeling to him.

John was leaking on him, smearing come stains on his trousers, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Sherlock reconciled himself to the eventual scolding he’d get from Victor for ruining his hard work. Of course Sherlock would have to make up a lie. He couldn’t very well tell him  _ how _ the trousers met their end, but there was nothing for it. John was well worth  _ that _ headache.

Sherlock cupped a hand around the nape of John’s neck, caressing up the side with his thumb. The skin there was still warm with his fading blush. John raised his head to meet his stare, pupils still dilated, irises the color of seawater during a storm, dark and murky. Sherlock smiled, his gaze flitting around John’s face, storing all the little signs of contentment and pleasure. John was beautiful when he was happy, and Sherlock vowed to do his best to keep him that way.

He leaned in for a kiss, soft and unhurried, and John hummed into it, arms coming up to fold around Sherlock’s shoulders. His lips were bruised and plump, bitten but still inviting, and Sherlock accepted, touching the tip of his tongue to John’s in a timid gesture.

Sherlock broke away with a sigh and ran a hand through his curls. They were tangled and damp and would be hell to deal with if he waited any longer. “Come on,” he said, kissing John once more. “Let’s go get cleaned up.”

He helped John up and they made their way downstairs to the loo on wobbly legs. John giggled at Sherlock nearly tripping on the last step which ended in him pressed the wall in what was supposed to be a warning but transformed into a snogging session that lasted for nearly seven minutes.

Sherlock was forced to drag himself away and pull John with him, or else they wouldn’t be getting anything done.

After they washed and John made sure they both ate and rehydrated, Sherlock took him to bed and soothed his aching muscles with his lips and hands until John was snoring beneath him.

Sherlock lay on his side beside him, head on his arm as he watched John’s back rise and fall. Faint red bands from the rope still circled his arms and thighs, but nothing that wouldn’t fade overnight.

His pulse had finally fallen to its normal rate after hours of feeling like it would hammer its way out of his chest. Sherlock hadn’t realized what it was he was feeling earlier, the anxiety and not knowing what to do first, but now he had a word for it: Overwhelmed.

John had been gone for years and to suddenly have him back? Overwhelmed was a huge understatement.

But, Sherlock could admit to being an opportunist. It was how he got to where he was in life. Patience was a virtue that never got him anything but frustrated. So he wasn’t going to take John’s sudden presence in his life lightly, and he wasn’t going to waste time.

He eyed his sock drawer across the room, thinking of the platinum bracelet and wondering if that would be good enough.

Perhaps a bracelet wasn’t suited for what Sherlock had in mind.

Perhaps… perhaps something more traditional.

Sherlock closed his eyes and tucked away the thought. It would keep for later, but for now, he would rest. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Meet me on [Tumblr!](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com) I promise I don't bite.
> 
> If you enjoyed the chapter, please feel free to leave some feedback. I always enjoy hearing what my readers have to say and it never fails to brighten my day. Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Come join me on [tumblr](http://lymphadei.tumblr.com) for more information on updates and all things Sherlockian! Feedback is always appreciated and adds fuel to my fire ;)


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